A Question About Converting Video Files With VLC...

[Jennings92]

Hello all!

I decided to make a 2nd post but this time on a different topic since I'm a bit of a newbie editor & I'm still learning certain things as I go. I'm currently following a guide on how to convert videos to MP3 in VLC. This is a link to the article which provides the steps involved during the process: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2719/how-to-convert-video-files-formats-to-mp3-with-vlc/

But what I'm confused about is why they recommend/suggest/ tell you to set the encapsulation to WAV even though the files are getting converted to MP3 anyway... So, I would appreciate it if someone here can fill me in & help me to better understand why. I would be grateful. And don't forget- if anyone here has ANY questions or needs additional details, feel free to shoot & I'll be sure to answer back!

Thanks in advance to anyone here who can be of help!

[TimStannard]

A reasonable question. However there is no option to encapsulate as an MP3 and you have to choose something!
From what I can ascertain Encapsulation is simply the act of putting the video and audio sources into one container. But here the container is an MP3. Except apparently MP3 is not really a container.
I'm all in favour of trying to understand things, but there is a limit and I long ago reached the point with codec/containers etc where so long as I gind something that works, and words well, I'll avoid setting my brain on fire by trying to understand all the destails.

Having said that, I'll certainly be interested if someone wants to explain.

[Grapes]

I get the feeling that tutorial you're working with is a bit backwards. The way to do it properly as far as I know is to just select the "Audio MP3" profile.
From the official VLC help pages:
Capture.JPG

What the author of that tutorial is doing is using the profile to export to h264 and then adjusting the settings so it only contains audio instead of the more usual "audio + video" and then saving it into an MP3 extension. That's also why I suspect they select WAV. All the other options will search for a video stream which will probably not work the way you want it to work when you stuff it into an MP3 extension.
It's like they try to move a box of stuff by taking the stuff out of the box then moving the box and then moving the stuff back in the box on the new location. Whereas what they could also do is just move the whole box with stuff and all.

One other explanation I can think of is that that tutorial you are looking at is so old that back then they didn't include the Audio MP3 profile yet. They do now so if you don't see it in your version. Update (or scroll down, there's a whole list).