Dailymotion's catalogue leans towards broadcast material in a way that makes audio unusually useful. Television interviews, news segments, panel discussions, radio simulcasts and archive programming all sit there, and a great deal of it is people talking with a camera pointed at them.
Its age compounds this. The site has been running since 2005, and material uploaded in its early years was encoded for the connections of the time — video that is soft and small but carries audio which remains perfectly serviceable. For an old interview, the picture is often the worse half.
That combination is the argument for taking the sound on its own. An hour of low-resolution archive video and an hour of the same recording as audio contain almost exactly the same information, and one of them is a fraction of the size.
Why people take audio from Dailymotion
Archive material is long and the video is frequently poor. An interview from 2008 exists at 380p with perfectly adequate sound, and the audio is simply the better half of the file.
Broadcast rights also move constantly on this platform, so material disappears with no notice. A small audio file is an easy thing to keep, and easier to keep a lot of.
And the use case is listening. Talk content is consumed while driving, working or walking, where video is actively unhelpful and a podcast app handles the job better than a video player.
Taking the audio from a Dailymotion video
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1
Copy the video address
Take the dailymotion.com address from your browser, or use the share control under the player. Short dai.ly links work too.
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2
Submit the video link here
Paste it into the field at the top of this page, which begins reading it at once.
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3
Take the audio track
Where a separate audio stream exists it appears beneath the video options, at a small fraction of their size.
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4
Listen wherever you like
Tap the row once it turns blue. Android drops it in Downloads and an iPhone in the Files app, from where any podcast app will pick it up.
When the picture is not carrying anything
For a great deal of what Dailymotion holds, taking the audio loses nothing at all.
| Kind of video | Is the picture needed? | Take it as |
|---|---|---|
| Radio show or simulcast | No | Audio |
| Interview or panel | Rarely | Audio |
| News segment | Sometimes | Either |
| Music performance | Often yes | Video |
| Documentary | Yes | Video |
The first row is worth noticing. A substantial amount of what sits on Dailymotion is radio content with a static image attached, where the video track is literally a still picture and taking it is pointless.
Dailymotion audio questions
Does every video offer an audio track?
Only where a separate stream is exposed. The list shows you what exists for that video.
What quality will the audio be?
Whatever was in the video. Older uploads carry lower bitrates, though for speech that is rarely a problem.
Do dai.ly short links work?
Yes, along with full dailymotion.com addresses.
Can I convert a live broadcast?
Only once it has finished and been published as a recording.
How much smaller is the audio?
Substantially. An hour of video runs to a few hundred megabytes and the same hour of audio is typically under sixty.
Is this any good for music?
Workable, but the audio has already been compressed once inside the video. A proper music source is always better.
Where does the MP3 save on Dailymotion?
Downloads on Android, the Files app on an iPhone.
Can I do a whole playlist?
No. Each video needs its own address.
Will anyone be notified on Dailymotion?
No. Nothing is reported and no account is used here.
Is extracting audio acceptable on Dailymotion?
For an interview or a talk you want to listen to again, ordinary. A great deal of Dailymotion is broadcast material owned by television companies, and that ownership does not change because you took the sound rather than the picture.