How to add just the audio of a video to a song.

I have several video files (.mp4) that we use in our services. With Easyworship 7.4 and SongSelect importing the song lyrics to a schedule is better for us; they're easier to read. 

But...

We don't have a band. I'd like to add the video to a song without seeing any of the video, i.e., I want to add just the audio. Any idea how I can accomplish this?



That's fairly simple. First download Audacity (it's free) and install it. Open it then drag and drop a video file into it. Then export it to an MP3 file of between 128 and 384 kbps.You can right click on the video file before hand, click on Properties, then the Details tab to determine what the original bitrate of the audio file was to begin with. I would suggest saving your MP3 at the same bitrate.


https://www.audacityteam.org/download/


It is possible that you will need to install FFMPeg to rip the audio file from the video file. Instructions for that can be found at the following link.


https://support.audacityteam.org/basics/downloading-and-installing-audacity/installing-ffmpeg

There are a couple of ways you could do this. 

1. You can use a video editor program to extract the audio from the video as an mp3 file and add it to EW. 

2. If you don't want to do that, you can add the video as the background to the song and then add a foreground image or video layer in front of it so the video isn't seen. You will want to make sure to set the foreground element as a 'background' in the Inspector. This way, you'll hear the audio, but won't see the video.

3. Just thought of another way, which will probably be the easiest. Set up the song the way you want it. Then, to add the video, edit the song and go to Masters tab. Then go to Media on the toolbar and select your video so it adds it as a foreground element. Open Inspector and click on Media. Set the media usage to 'Background' and Repeating to 'Repeat Off'. Then set the Opacity to '0' and save your song. This will play the video but you won't see it, you will only hear it and it will play across all slides.



Donal,


Thanks for the response. A few hours after I posted the question, I actually thought of this. I use VLC and it did the job for me. 


But thanks for the link to the Audacity download. I'll give that a try as well. 


Best

Jeff


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