Mute a video

Instant and lossless

Removing an audio track does not require re-encoding anything. The video stream is copied through untouched and the audio is simply left out, which means this is near-instant even on a long file and costs no quality whatsoever.

That is worth knowing because most video operations are the opposite — slow and slightly lossy. Muting is one of the few that is genuinely free.

Why people mute

Background conversation in a clip you want to share. A screen recording that picked up your keyboard, or a notification sound. Footage you intend to put music over. Removing accidental audio before posting — someone's name, a phone number read aloud, a television in the background.

That last one matters more than the others: an accidental recording is a privacy problem, and muting removes it completely rather than lowering it.

It is a removal, not a silence

The audio track is dropped from the file entirely, not replaced with a quiet one. There is nothing left to recover or turn back up, which is exactly what you want if the reason for muting was something you would rather not distribute.

The file also gets smaller by however much the audio weighed — often several megabytes on a long clip.

If the video has no audio already

You are told, rather than handed back an identical file with a new name. Screen recordings made without capturing system audio are the usual case.

Related

To keep the sound but change its level, use change video volume. To keep the audio as a separate file, extract it first.