I’d like to continue making WAVs from YouTube videos, but after a year’s recess I’ve hit a snag when I try again. Previous method depended on program called Switch, now no longer freely available. Can anyone recommend reliable method to create high-quality WAVs (for burning to CDs) from YouTube? Thanks — LH
I use Google Chrome with an extension called “Sample Tab Audio” Gives option to record and download .wav file. Works well and very simple to use.
I use Clipgrab which can download only the audio part of the video if you choose the right option in the drop-down menu. Use an Audacity macro to convert the downloaded audio files to WAV, if necessary.
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Try Youtube to MP3 then load the MP3 file
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But the person posting wanted WAV files.
Then convert the MP3 to WAV? Though some resolution may be lost of course
I’ve been using Any Video Converter, free download. I usually make MP3s, but you can make WAVs.
I recorded them to OBS, then dropped the resulting video into Audacity and it just automatically strips out the video, leaving you the waveform audio and you can then save it as WAV or whatever format you chose.
That’s what I did for about a half dozen songs I put into a playlist for my own amusement as I had no sources of these tracks in my own collection recently. The rest were sourced from vinyl or CD’s I had already.
Depending on what I want to do with the audio, I either use ClipGrab, or I simply play the video in a browser at the highest quality while I record the audio with Audacity.
I would be interested in knowing what the bit depth and sample rate is of some of these downloaded YouTube videos. When I record video on my camcorder or cell phone the audio seems like it was put in as an afterthought.
The best program I know of for that job is: MediaInfo
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Of course it’s impossible to know the format or quality of what was uploaded to YouTube but you can (usually) find out what YouTube is feeding you. I’d forgotten how to do it, but a quick search turned-up this:
- Right click a youtube video in your browser
- Click “Stats for Nerds”
- Look for “codecs”, note the last part (e.g. “Opus 250”)
- Look up the value here
If you record it in Audacity it will be converted and captured as uncompressed floating-point PCM and you can export to your desired format.
I’m sure Wrecks0 know this, but there is no further “damage” by the conversion/decompression to PCM (which is the same underlying format as WAV).
I apologize for hijacking this thread.
My concern is the bit length. When I record 4K video, the audio is recorded in 16 bits. Which I guess is fine for voice recording, but probably not for music. My guess is this was chosen to give priority to the video stream and still record as fast as possible.
YouTube probably converts the video at a higher audio bit length. Especially if they know it’s a music video (somehow).
Most lossy formats don’t have a fixed bit depth and they don’t store individual samples.
I don’t know much about Opus but MP3 actually has MORE dynamic range capability than 16-bits (and I think less than 24-bits).
I think you just have to judge it by how it sounds. But it’s hard to know what to compare it to if you don’t have the uncompressed original so maybe it could sound better…
the audio is recorded in 16 bits. Which I guess is fine for voice recording, but probably not for music.
The guys over at HydrogenAudio who do blind ABX tests have pretty-well demonstrated that a high-resolution original and a copy down-sampled to “CD quality” will sound identical under normal listening conditions.
But if you compare a high resolution release to the CD, it may be mixed or mastered differently so it can sound different. Sometimes a newer high resolution is remastered with “loudness war” dynamic compression so it can sound worse if you like dynamic contrast.
A high-bitrate MP3 can often sound identical to a high-resolution original in a proper blind listening test, or you may have to listen very carefully to hear a difference. MP3 is lossy and you can ger compression artifacts but it’s not as bad as it’s reputation.
Dolby Digital on DVDs is also lossy compression (AC3) and some of the best sounding stuff I own (to my ears) is DVD concerts with 5.1 surround!
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