“This clip is too long to extract audio in the browser.”

Error details

Message on screen

“This clip is too long to extract audio in the browser. Try a shorter one.”

Internal code

too_large

Where it appears

MP3 conversion in your browser

HTTP status

None: notification in the page

Does retrying help?

No. The limits are fixed.

How to fix it

1. Download the MP4 instead. Save the lowest quality MP4; the audio is identical in every rendition.
2. Convert on a computer. Use ffmpeg: ffmpeg -i clip.mp4 -vn -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k clip.mp3, or any desktop converter.
3. Keep the AAC. Many players accept audio without re-encoding: ffmpeg -i clip.mp4 -vn -c:a copy clip.m4a is instant and lossless.

What this message means

The first limit is 100 MB for the source file we download for conversion (we already use the smallest rendition, since the audio is the same in all of them). The second applies to live replays delivered as HLS: anything over 15 minutes is rejected before we start, because remuxing the stream first would exceed memory on most phones.

Both limits show the same message, either immediately (replays, or when the server reports the size) or partway through the download if the size wasn't known in advance.

Why it happens

• A long video. Long uploads, even at the lowest rendition, can pass 100 MB.
• A live replay over 15 minutes. Broadcast replays are often one or two hours long.

Why the limit exists

Conversion happens entirely on your device. The browser has to hold the whole MP4 in memory, decode every audio sample, and then encode the MP3, so a long video can push a phone past the memory a single tab is allowed to use. Rather than crash the tab halfway through, we cap the source at 100 MB, checked both from the size X announces and while the file streams in. Live replays are capped at 15 minutes because their segments are joined into one MP4 before the audio is read.

Because the converter always uses the smallest video version, the 100 MB cap covers a lot of material: most posts under several minutes stay far below it.

The check runs before decoding starts, so you aren't left waiting for a progress bar that can never finish: the message usually appears within a second or two of pressing the MP3 button, as soon as the announced size or the streamed bytes cross the cap.

Getting audio from a long video anyway

• Download the MP4 at the lowest quality offered (the audio is identical in every version) and convert it on a computer with a desktop audio tool or ffmpeg -i clip.mp4 -vn -b:a 128k clip.mp3.
• On iPhone, the Shortcuts app's Encode Media action can turn a saved video into audio only.
• If you only need part of the clip, trim the MP4 first; a shorter file will usually convert in the browser.

Questions people ask