How do I convert MP3 to MP4 with an image?
Open the MP3 here, press Cover art in the Text panel and choose your image, then press Export and Export video. The picture becomes the video track and the MP3 becomes its sound.
Free · no watermark · in your browser
Convert MP3 to MP4 with a picture
Pick a cover image, choose how much of the track to keep and save an MP4 that plays on YouTube, phones and TVs. The conversion happens in your browser.
To convert an MP3 to MP4, open the MP3 above, add a picture under Text with Cover art, then press Export and Export video. You get a real video file: your image as the picture track (with a slim wave along the bottom if you want one) and the MP3’s sound as an AAC audio track.
An MP4 always needs something to show, which is why many converters hand back a black screen. This one opens on the Still cover template, so the picture you choose fills the frame, and you can switch to a moving music visualizer or a plain colour before you export. The MP3 is read by your own browser and the video is encoded there too. Nothing is installed, there is no watermark, and you don’t need an account.
How to convert an MP3 to MP4
Open the MP3
On the card at the top of the page, Landscape (16:9) is already selected for YouTube and computer screens. Press Choose an MP3 (Ctrl+O, or ⌘+O on a Mac) or drop the file on the card. Pick Square or Vertical first if the video is for a phone feed.
Add your picture
The studio opens on the Text panel. Press Cover art and choose a JPEG or PNG; the background and colours follow it. Type a Title and Show or speaker if you want words on screen, or leave them empty.
Keep the whole track, or part of it
A file of 75 seconds or less opens whole. A longer song opens on its liveliest 30 seconds, so drag the Clip start handle on the timeline to the beginning and Clip end to the finish. One video holds up to 10 minutes.
Export the MP4
Press Export (Ctrl+Enter or ⌘+Enter). Choose 1080p or 720p and 30 fps or 60 fps, press Export video, then Download video. On a phone, Share sends it straight to Photos or another app.
What is inside the MP4 you download
MP3 is a sound-only format. MP4 is a container that normally carries a picture track and a sound track side by side, and most video sites, including YouTube, won’t take a file without a picture. Converting is therefore two jobs: make a picture track, and put the music next to it.
- Picture: H.264 video, the format every phone, browser, smart TV and upload page plays. Square is 1080×1080, Vertical 1080×1920, Portrait 1080×1350 and Landscape 1920×1080 at 1080p; 720p is two-thirds of each side.
- Sound: AAC at 192 kbps in stereo. The MP3 is decoded and encoded again as AAC, because AAC is the sound format MP4 players expect. At that bitrate the change is very hard to hear on ordinary music and speech.
- No extras: no watermark, no intro card and no logo, only your picture and your track.
A few browsers can’t encode H.264. In those, the file is saved as WebM instead, which YouTube and most computers accept but some phones and older TVs do not. If you need an MP4 and get a WebM, try again in another up-to-date browser.
Choosing the picture
Whatever you add under Cover art is used twice in the Still cover template: large in the middle and as a soft-focus copy filling the rest of the frame, so a square album cover sits comfortably in a wide video without black bars.
Image sizes that look sharp
- A square cover of at least 1080×1080 pixels covers every format. Album art exported for streaming services (usually 3000×3000) is ideal.
- For a photo that should fill a 16:9 frame edge to edge, use Style → Background → Photo instead, with a landscape picture of at least 1920×1080.
- Screenshots and small thumbnails look soft at 1080p. If that is all you have, export at 720p, where the softness shows less.
Still, moving or plain
- A still picture with a thin progress wave: leave Still cover as it is. The wave along the bottom is the Seek bar style, which fills as the track plays.
- Completely still: open Wave and choose None.
- Something that moves with the music: choose Visualiser or Vinyl in Templates. The audio visualizer page explains the styles.
- No picture at all: open Style, set Background to Solid and choose a colour. That is the honest version of the “black screen” converters, with your title on it.
File size, frame rate and quality
A cover image barely changes from frame to frame, so most of an MP3-to-MP4 file is the picture encoded once and the sound. Two settings in the Export video sheet decide the rest:
- Frame rate: a still picture gains nothing from 60 fps. Choose 30 fps for a smaller file, and keep 60 fps for a visualiser with fast movement.
- Size: 1080p for YouTube and anything watched on a big screen; 720p when the file has to be emailed or sent through a chat app with a size limit.
Under the finished preview you see the file size and how long it took. If the size is a problem, export again at 720p and 30 fps. The sound stays at 192 kbps either way.
Longer than 10 minutes? Use FFmpeg
One video made here holds up to 10 minutes, which covers almost every song. For a full podcast episode, a DJ mix or an audiobook chapter, the free command-line tool FFmpeg makes a still-image MP4 of any length on Windows, Mac or Linux:
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i cover.jpg -i track.mp3 -c:v libx264 -tune stillimage -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -b:a 192k -shortest track.mp4
-loop 1 repeats the image, -tune stillimage tells the encoder the picture doesn’t move, -pix_fmt yuv420p keeps the file playable on phones and TVs, and -shortest stops the video when the sound ends. Use an image whose width and height are even numbers, or H.264 refuses it.
MP3 to MP4: questions people ask
Can I convert MP3 to MOV instead?
The studio saves MP4, not MOV. Every program that plays MOV, including QuickTime, iMovie and Final Cut Pro, also opens MP4, so you rarely need MOV. If an app insists on it, open the MP4 in QuickTime Player on a Mac and use File → Export As to save a .mov copy.
Will converting MP3 to MP4 lower the sound quality?
Slightly in theory, because the sound is encoded again as 192 kbps AAC. In practice it is very hard to hear on most music. Starting from a better file helps more: if you have the WAV or FLAC master, open that instead, as the WAV to MP4 page explains.
Is my MP3 uploaded to a server?
No. The MP3 and the picture are opened and turned into a video by your browser. The only time any sound leaves your device is if you choose to press Make captions, which sends the selected clip’s sound to our speech provider to be written out.
Can I convert MP3 to MP4 on my phone?
Yes, in a recent version of Safari on iPhone or Chrome on Android. Choose the MP3 from Files, add a picture from your photos and export. Long videos at 1080p take longer on a phone than on a computer.
Is there a time limit?
Each video holds up to 10 minutes of the track. Longer recordings still open, and you choose which 10 minutes or less to use with the handles on the timeline.
What is the difference between MP3 and MP4?
MP3 holds only sound; MP4 is a container that usually holds video and sound together. The MP3 vs MP4 guide covers when to use each and why an MP4 can also be sound only.