iMovie for Windows > Video Editor > iMovie Formats > Edit MP3 Files on Mac and Windows

Need to Add MP3 to Video Files As BGM?

Download The Best MP3 to Video Editor to Make Movies with Music.

Compatible with all popular any audio and video format. Mac and PC supported.
Includes all basic audio and video editing tools.
Save as MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, GIF, M4V, 3GP, FLV, MPG, WebM, MKV, etc.
Comes with lots of free music and sound effects.

What's a MP3 File?

Anyone never heard of MP3? No. However, you may know these facts for the first time. The full name of MP3 is MPEG-1 Layer 3, not MPEG-3. MP3 is an efficient audio coding format with high compression rate. It converts audio files into smaller files with a larger compression ratio, and maintains the sound quality of the original files. MP3 is a part of ISO/MPEG standard. This standard has been constantly updated to meet the pursuit of "high quality, low quantity". Lastly, three audio coding and decoding schemes, namely, MPEG-1 Layer 1, Layer 2 and Layer 3, have been created. The MPEG-1 Layer 3 compression rate can reach to 1:10 to 1:12, while MP1 and MP2 to 4:1 and 8:1. The MP3 file with 1MB in size can play for one minute, while the WAV file with one minute CD quality (44100Hz, 16bit, dual channel) takes up 10M space. Thus, A 650M MP3 disc could play for more than 10 hours. By contrary, a CD disc with the same capacity saves only 1 hour or so music.

MP3 audio compression includes encoding and decoding. The encoding is to convert the data in WAV files into bitstream with high compression rate, and decoding is to recognize bitstream and turn it into WAV files. The acceptable frequency range of human ear is 20 Hz-220 kHz. MP3 intercepts a large number of redundant signals. The encoder transforms the original sound into specific frequency range through a hybrid filter bank. Using psychoacoustic model, the ear-sensible noise level is estimated and applied. After quantization, it is converted into Huffman coding and generate the MP3 bitstream. The decoder is much simpler. Its task is to extract the sound signal from the encoded spectral line components through inverse quantization and inverse transformation.

open and edit MP3 files

For a very long time, Winamp is the most popular MP3 player software. And it still has millions of users now. However, you have much more choices for playing MP3 files. The popular MP3 player applications include iTunes, Dopamine, MusicBee, Clementine, foobar2000, MediaMonkey, etc. Most multimedia applications allow you to import MP3 files, like iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Movavi Video Editor, Wondershare Filmora, etc.

How to Open MP3 Files with Movavi Video Editor

Open MP3 files in Windows

In the main screen, go to the Media tab on the left sidebar and click the Add Media Files button.
Go through the top menu bar File > Add Media Files, or simply press Ctrl+O.
Resize Mov Video Editor's window and then drop MP3 files to the timeline.

Open MP3 files on Mac

Go to the Media tab on the left sidebar and click the Add Media Files button.
Go through File > Add Media Files in the top menu bar, or press Command+O.
Simply drop MP3 files from Finder to the timeline.

Open MP3 Video on All Modern Computers

Windows 10	Windows 8	Windows 7	Windows Vista	Windows XP
macOS Big Sur	macOS High Sierra	macOS Sierra	macOS el Capitan	Mac OS X 10.7 or higher

FAQs on MP3 Editing and Downloading

Question:What's the best free MP3 editor?

Answer: You may find a load of free MP3 editor programs, but I strongly recommend Audacity. It's a free and cross-platform audio recorder, editor and mixer. Whatever you're using Windows, Mac or Linux, you're able to download and use Audacity to edit your MP3 files for totally free.

Question:How Do You Download YouTube to MP3?

Answer: There are many online YouTube to MP3 downloader applications, such as 2Conv, OnlineVideoConverter and Convert2MP3. There also desktop YouTube downloader can help you download YouTube to MP3. For example, Wondershare AllMyTube for Mac and Windows and VDownloader for Windows. Both support batch download, which is helpful to build your music collections.

Movavi Video Editor Supports MP3 Files and Almost Any Media Formats

Movavi Video Editor opens MP3 files and all popular audio and video files. It's is an all-in-one video editing application to make movies from MP3 music, photos and video clips.

MP3 Movie Maker Introduction