Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

Application lets Mac users save audio from Flash files

An application called iExtractMP3 may open some doors for people want to save …

DRM and content protection schemes don't always last very long these days, as enterprising individuals tend to find ways pretty quickly to get past the protection and get to the juicy nugget of content in the center. The latest content nuggets up for grabs are the wealth of music videos available on YouTube. MakeUseOf has the details of an application called iExtractMP3, which allows users to pull the audio from Flash files like those found on many sites.

YouTube already includes functionality that lets you buy the music found in certain videos, but some people just aren't willing to shell out the cash. YouTube and most other sites also have their content in FLV (Flash Video) format, and as you might expect, these files contain both video and audio information. FLV files can also be downloaded without a lot of effort, after which iExtractMP3 takes over. The software splits the audio and video tracks in FLV files, and saves the audio track separately. The application doesn't actually transcode the audio, meaning that there's no change of quality. This can be both good and bad, given the audio quality of some YouTube files.

I have no idea where extracting music from YouTube videos or other sources falls on the legal continuum, and we can't necessarily condone using the software. YouTube and various content providers will probably get pissy if a lot of people start doing this, though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the ability to do this disappear in the future. As for the software itself, iExtractMP3 is a free Universal Binary that runs on both Tiger and Leopard.

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7 Reader Comments

  1. Wiretap Studio Lite and Pro will do this from any audio source on the mac.
    4808 posts | registered
  2. And this is why fair-use claims for mashups and the like fall on deaf ears.
    1229 posts | registered
  3. Personally, I just use a simple JavaScript bookmarklet which lets me view the videos using QuickTime, and then download the source. Works like a charm…
    1481 posts | registered
  4. quote:
    No it can only be good. You cannot improve sound quality by transcoding the file.

    Is this really the first program in the Mac universe to do this? ffmpeg and mencoder could do this without blinking.

    Legally, the people posting entire-song videos are already distributing without permission and would probably be held accountable in court if they were sued. Downloading and ripping songs from these videos would usually also be infringement.
    2180 posts | registered
  5. quote:
    Originally posted by dantesan:

    Yes, they can record to new files in real time streaming the video. Neither (recording or the real-time necessity of it) is what this story is about.
    882 posts | registered
  6. I've used MPEG Streamclip to do this in a 2-step process: Download the .flv file via DownloadHelper or something, then opening it in MPEG Streamclip and extracting the audio.
    6213 posts | registered
  7. VLC and ffmpeg have been available to do this for years on the Mac, but those have a bit of a learning curve.
    9516 posts | registered

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