Intro and First Tip: Extracting Audio from a Video File

Howdy, Linux partners!

I'm starting this Linux blog because I keep thinking, once I've figured out how to do something in Linux, that I should share it with the world, so those who are searching for answers will find them.


To that end, i'll state that there are a lot more people with a higher knowledge of Linux than I. They often know all the obscure commands from memory, whereas I often have to look them up. While I don't consider myself an Linux guru, I have used it as my main OS for several years now. I started out using Lubuntu using the LXDE interface (GUI), then moved to Xubuntu using a xfce GUI (Graphical User Interface). I really liked the xfce GUI, save for a couple of small issues.

I kept hearing about Linux Mint, and what a good setup it is. So I decided to give it a spin. I also heard a lot of good things about the Cinnamon GUI, which is one of the GUI's you can get installed, the other two being the other two being MATE and Gnome. Likely you could install other GUI's on top of the Mint system.  I thought about using xfce but I was hoping I could solve the problems that I mentioned. So I tried Cinnamon and I loved it.

My issues? One was the xfce power manager didn't have an option for "do nothing when the lid is closed" and the date/time function required one to look up date coding in order to adjust the display to your preferences.

I was presently sold on Cinnamon when I clicked on the system date. It pops up a calendar, like they all do. However, it has a link at the bottom of the calendar that says, "Date and Time Settings". I clicked on it, expecting the code entry fields. What greeted me, however, was a GUI for setting the date and time so I didn't have to go search for the codes on the web. (LIke a common set of codes looks like this: %h%h:%m%m. That's when you know you have a good system, when the programmers pay attention to small details like that.

But, that is not my first tip on this blog. My first tip will be concerning how to extract music/soundtrack from a video. It is actually easier than you would think.

I use OpenShot to edit my videos. It isn't a full-featured editor, but it gets the job done. One of its drawbacks is being able to separate the audio from the video. Ideally I'd like to edit them in the program. But, without that option, I would need to first extract the music from a video file, edit it with a program, then import it back into your project.

To extract the audio from the file for editing, first you should have a program called Audacity. That one would normally be in the repositories. If not, you can download it from their website.  Once installed, all you do is open the video file with Audacity and it will (at least I've tried it with mp4 files, your mileage may vary) show only the audio in the file, which you can then edit and save as a mp3 file, ready to re-import into OpenShot.

Yes, it really is that easy.