# Eliminating audio in an MP4

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eliminating-audio-in-an-mp4/743154>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 14, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eliminating-audio-in-an-mp4/743154 "2016-01-14T18:03:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eliminating-audio-in-an-mp4/743154/1 "2016-01-14T18:03:45Z")

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I have a bunch of MP4s that I want to eliminate the audio on. Is there a utility I can run that strips out the audio component? Also, if I take out the audio, how much will that reduce the size of the MP4?

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**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eliminating-audio-in-an-mp4/743154/2 "2016-01-14T18:24:42Z")

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[Try VLC](http://www.guidingtech.com/52911/mute-audio-use-vlc-youtube-video/), it is a “Swiss army knife” of media player/converter programs.

Removing the audio likely won’t reduce the size that much, very rough guess maybe 10% or so.

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**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eliminating-audio-in-an-mp4/743154/3 "2016-01-15T03:12:55Z")

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avidemux will do an excellent job of this.

Maybe a 2MB/minute reduction in file size. Depends on a lot of things, but that’s the ballpark. It’ll be minimal compared to the video, most likely.

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**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eliminating-audio-in-an-mp4/743154/4 "2016-01-15T06:07:10Z")

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MPEG Streamclip is a nice free simple program that will do this (and other stuff.) There’s an option to remove the audio track and you can then save the file as almost any format you’d like.

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**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eliminating-audio-in-an-mp4/743154/5 "2016-01-15T08:28:22Z")

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You can easily do this with the command-line tool [FFmpeg](https://www.ffmpeg.org/):

```auto

ffmpeg -i myvideo.mp4 -c copy -an myvideo-mute.mp4

```

How much this will reduce the size depends entirely on the video. For a normal feature-length film, not a whole lot (maybe five to ten percent). For a music video set to a slide show of static images, removing the audio will cut the file down to almost nothing.