Turn lectures, Zoom and Teams recordings into audio you can listen to anywhere

Recorded classes, webinars and video meetings are packed with useful information, but watching them again is time-consuming and the files are huge. Turning them into audio lets you revise while commuting, running or cooking, and makes archiving and transcription much easier.

Why convert recordings to audio?

• Size: an hour of screen-sharing video can weigh 300 MB to 1 GB; the same hour as MP3 at 128 kbps weighs about 58 MB, and about 29 MB as Opus at 64 kbps.
• Listening anywhere: audio plays in the background on phones, with the screen off, in podcast apps or in the car.
• Speed: most audio players can play at 1.5× or 2× without the distortion you get on video.
• Transcription: speech-to-text tools work on audio files and upload faster when they are small.

Step 1: get the recording file

• Zoom (local recording): files are saved in Documents/Zoom. Each meeting folder contains an MP4 video and, by default, an audio_only.m4a file – you may already have what you need.
• Zoom (cloud recording): download the MP4 or the “Audio only” file from the Recordings page of your Zoom account.
• Microsoft Teams: recordings are stored in OneDrive or SharePoint; open the recording and choose Download to get the MP4.
• Google Meet: recordings go to the organiser’s Google Drive (folder Meet Recordings) as MP4.
• Online courses and webinars: only download files the platform lets you download.

Step 2: convert with the right settings

1. Open Videos-to-MP3 and drop the MP4.
2. Choose MP3 at 128 kbps – ideal for voices. If your player supports it, Opus at 64 or 96 kbps halves the size with the same clarity.
3. Open Advanced options and tick Normalize volume: it evens out quiet and loud speakers.
4. To skip the “waiting for everyone to join” part, set a start time (e.g. 3:20).

The 100 MB limit applies to the video you upload. Long screen-sharing recordings may exceed it: in that case, download the “audio only” version offered by Zoom, or extract the audio locally with FFmpeg: ffmpeg -i meeting.mp4 -vn -ac 1 -b:a 64k meeting.mp3.

Step 3: organise your audio library

Give files explicit names (2026-10-12 Statistics – lecture 5.mp3), keep one folder per course or project, and add chapters or timestamps in your notes. Many podcast apps (Pocket Casts, AntennaPod, Apple Podcasts via your own feed) can import local files and remember where you stopped.

Revising efficiently with audio

• Listen once at 1.25–1.5× to get the overview, then return to difficult passages.
• Combine with a transcript: search the text, listen to the exact moment.
• Use the trim option to make short clips of key explanations before an exam.

Respect privacy and rules

Meeting recordings contain the voices – personal data – of other participants. Keep the files private, do not share them outside the intended audience, delete them when they are no longer needed, and follow your institution’s or employer’s recording policy. Lecture recordings are generally reserved for students’ personal study.