Youtube videos are commonly converted to mp3, which basically means that the audio portion of a video is extracted and saved as an mp3 file. Especially music and educational videos are prime candidates for this process. It is possible to convert the Youtube videos to mp3 for playback on an mp3 player or cell phone afterwards.

Different tools are available for the process, all with their distinct advantages and disadvantages. They usually fall into the categories of online services, browser add-ons and desktop tools. We have decided to review one of each category. Note that Youtube recently revised their API, which breaks many tools that we have tested in all three categories.

Convert Youtube Videos To MP3 Online

Dirpy is an online service that can convert a single Youtube video to mp3. All that needs to be done is to copy and paste the Youtube video url into the web form on the Dirpy page and to click the download link afterwards. The conversion and download of the mp3 to the local computer system begins immediately. Dirpy offers several tools on their website, including a transcoder and mp3 tag editor. Furthermore, it is  possible to download the video as well.

Convert Youtube Videos with a bookmarklet

Dirpy also provides a bookmarklet to make the process easier. A bookmarklet is basically a bookmark which can be added to the web browser’s bookmarks. It will send the url directly to Dirpy when it is activated on a Youtube video url page. Bookmarklets work in all modern web browsers, an advantage over web browser plugins which only work in one or a few.

Convert Youtube Videos To MP3 locally

Desktop applications often offer features which online services do not. It is actually not that easy to find a working program to download and convert Youtube videos in one go. Due to the recently revised Youtube API, most applications appear to be broken at this point in time.

DamnVid is a Youtube downloader and mp3 converter that is available for Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh systems. The program is actually compatible with lots of different video hosting services. Videos can be converted to mp3 right away by selecting the mp3 profile from the right sidebar. The application features a built in search, which however did not work when we tested it. Nevertheless, it is possible to copy and paste video urls from Youtube directly into the program interface. It is likely that the developers will fix the search problem in the near future. The Damn Vid Youtube downloader will also catch any Youtube video URLs which are opened in a web browser and add the videos automatically in its interface. DamnVid is available from the Google Code profile site.

Tubequeue is a Windows-only Youtube downloader that offers batch conversions and a build in search. This has the advantage that the user does not have to copy URLs from the Youtube website into the application. The batch processing feature can convert multiple Youtube videos to mp3 files at once. Tubequeue supports general searches and custom searches. It will display 25 videos per results page. The user can then move none, some or all of the videos that have been found to the conversion settings queue. The output file format can be selected here. The mp3 format is but one of the possibilities, other options include mp4, avi and flv file formats. The selected videos are then added to the processing queue from where they can be converted with a click on the download/convert button. Tubequeue is currently not able to download videos.

Please let us know if you know of free alternatives to the programs that we have discussed and reviewed in this article. Let us know how you convert Youtube videos to mp3.

Tubequeue – as the name suggests – is of the latter sort. It is a standalone software program for the Windows operating system that can not only download multiple videos from Youtube but also convert them into different formats so that the videos can be transferred to other devices such as mobile phones, mp3 players or gaming consoles.

The program works the following way: The user begins by entering a search phrase in the search box at the top left corner of the program. This will display 100 Youtube videos related to that search query. It is possible to sort the results by relevancy, data added, popularity or view count just like on the Youtube website. The Youtube videos are displayed with a small image thumbnail, names, ratings and playing time. A click on the right arrow key will open the selected Youtube video in a preview window where it can be watched. The second possibility to find Youtube videos is to use the Youtube website search instead which will basically display the Youtube website in the program window.

A right-click on one or multiple videos in the list makes it possible to add the selected videos to the processing queue. This will move these videos to the conversion settings pane where the user can select an output format. Formats offered included avi, mp4, mov, mp3 or mpeg with the option to keep the original flv format.

A click on the Add To Processing Queue button will move the videos once again. This time to the processing queue where all information and settings that have been selected so far are shown again. A click on Download / Convert will start the Youtube video download and conversion process.

It is possible to add Youtube urls and video formats that already reside on the local computer system to the queue as well. TubeQueue is an interesting software program to download and convert multiple Youtube videos in short time. It has some performance problems during video playback and does not cope well with videos that are not available in the user’s country. It is a rock solid program otherwise though. TubeQueue requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5.