Audacity Forum

daveleonard wrote:I am using Win 7 Ultimate.
When I try to record music from YouTube I do not get a wave form. My exported files are all blank with the sound of static. I have both RealTek and Any Soft Virtual sound. I have tried setting both in Audacity but nothing works. The results always the same. I do not think it is recording with no wave form.

For what reason are you trying to record the audio from Youtube anyway?

You can simply download the Youtube clip (there's like a zillion of Firefox add-on's for this purpose), as FLV or MP4 file, and then demultiplex the audio stream from the file, using FLV Extract or MP4Box, respectively.

This is a 100% lossless process (it cannot do the lossy audio compression that Youtube has already applied though), so it will give you the best possible audio quality.

Gunnar wrote:

daveleonard wrote:I am using Win 7 Ultimate.
When I try to record music from YouTube I do not get a wave form. My exported files are all blank with the sound of static. I have both RealTek and Any Soft Virtual sound. I have tried setting both in Audacity but nothing works. The results always the same. I do not think it is recording with no wave form.

For what reason are you trying to record the audio from Youtube anyway?

You can simply download the Youtube clip (there's like a zillion of Firefox add-on's for this purpose), as FLV or MP4 file

Yes we said that twice already.

Gunnar wrote:and then demultiplex the audio stream from the file, using FLV Extract or MP4Box, respectively.

That is the best solution, but the user has FFmpeg already, so the easier solution if he downloads the video is to just drag the video into Audacity then export it in the chosen format. If he exports to WAV or FLAC he does not lose quality, but ends up with a larger file then demultiplexing the original audio.

Or of course use -acodec copy in FFmpeg by running it at the command-line.


Gale