Convert 3GP to CAF — Free Online Tool
Extract and convert audio from 3GP mobile video files into Apple's Core Audio Format (CAF) with uncompressed PCM audio. This tool strips the AAC or MP3 audio track from your 3GP container and re-encodes it as 16-bit PCM (pcm_s16le) inside a CAF file — ideal for bringing mobile-captured audio into Apple's professional audio ecosystem.
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FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
Drop your 3GP file here
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Settings
Note: Browser-based encoding uses approximate quality targets. For precise CRF compression, copy the FFmpeg command above and run it on your desktop.
Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
3GP files store audio using lossy codecs like AAC or MP3, compressed specifically for 3G mobile transmission with limited bandwidth. During this conversion, FFmpeg demuxes the audio track from the 3GP container, discards the video stream entirely (since CAF is an audio-only format), and decodes the compressed audio to raw PCM samples. Those samples are then re-encoded as 16-bit signed little-endian PCM (pcm_s16le) and wrapped in a CAF container. This means the output is uncompressed audio — substantially larger than the source but free from the artifacts of mobile-optimized compression and ready for use in Logic Pro, GarageBand, or other Apple audio tools.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the open-source multimedia processing engine running here as a WebAssembly module in your browser, or locally on your desktop if you have FFmpeg installed. |
-i input.3gp
|
Specifies the input file — a 3GP container, the mobile multimedia format used by 3G phones, which typically holds H.264 or MPEG-4 video alongside AAC or AMR audio. |
-c:a pcm_s16le
|
Sets the audio codec to 16-bit signed little-endian PCM — uncompressed audio that Apple's Core Audio and every major DAW can read natively, decoding the 3GP's compressed audio track to raw samples in the process. |
-b:a 128k
|
Specifies a target audio bitrate of 128 kbps — this flag is effectively inert for PCM codecs like pcm_s16le since uncompressed audio bitrate is fixed by sample rate and bit depth, but it is retained in the command for consistency with other tool configurations. |
output.caf
|
Defines the output filename and tells FFmpeg to wrap the resulting PCM audio in a CAF (Core Audio Format) container — Apple's professional audio container format designed for use across macOS and iOS. |
Common Use Cases
- Importing a voice memo or field recording captured on an older 3G-era mobile phone into Logic Pro or GarageBand for professional editing
- Archiving audio from 3GP video clips recorded on legacy Nokia, Samsung, or early smartphone devices into a lossless-quality PCM format for long-term storage
- Extracting spoken dialogue or ambient audio from 3GP footage to use as source material in Final Cut Pro audio editing workflows on macOS
- Converting a 3GP audio recording from a feature phone into CAF format for use with Core Audio APIs in an iOS or macOS development project
- Cleaning up and upscaling the audio quality perception of a 3GP recording by removing the container overhead and working directly with uncompressed PCM in an Apple DAW
- Migrating a collection of 3GP multimedia messages (MMS videos) to a modern Apple-native audio format for easier indexing and playback in macOS applications
Frequently Asked Questions
No — the conversion cannot recover audio detail that was lost when the original 3GP file was encoded using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3. What it does do is decode that compressed audio to raw, uncompressed PCM so no additional lossy compression is applied. The result is a transparent, bit-perfect representation of the 3GP's audio content in an uncompressed form, which is ideal for editing without further generation loss.
3GP files use aggressive lossy compression (typically AAC at 64k or lower) designed to minimize file size for mobile storage and 3G transmission. CAF with pcm_s16le stores raw, uncompressed audio at 16 bits per sample — a one-minute stereo recording at 44.1kHz takes roughly 10MB uncompressed versus under 500KB in a mobile-optimized 3GP. This size increase is expected and is the tradeoff for getting uncompressed audio suitable for professional editing.
3GP files can carry limited metadata (title, author, date) in their MP4-derived container structure, but CAF has its own metadata schema and FFmpeg's 3GP-to-CAF conversion does not reliably map all metadata fields across. Recording date and embedded tags may be lost or partially transferred. If preserving metadata is important, you should check the output file in a tool like MediaInfo or tag it manually after conversion.
CAF is a native Apple format and is natively supported by Logic Pro, GarageBand, Final Cut Pro, QuickTime Player, and any application using the Core Audio framework on macOS and iOS. The pcm_s16le codec used here is one of the most universally supported PCM variants and will open without issues in all of these applications, as well as in Audacity on macOS.
To use a different codec, replace '-c:a pcm_s16le' with another CAF-compatible codec — for example, '-c:a pcm_s24le' for 24-bit audio, '-c:a flac' for lossless compressed audio, or '-c:a aac -b:a 192k' for a smaller lossy CAF file. The '-b:a' bitrate flag only has meaningful effect on variable-bitrate codecs like AAC or Opus; for PCM codecs, the bitrate is determined by sample rate and bit depth, so '-b:a 128k' in the default command is effectively ignored by pcm_s16le.
Yes — on macOS or Linux you can use a shell loop: 'for f in *.3gp; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a pcm_s16le "${f%.3gp}.caf"; done'. On Windows Command Prompt use: 'for %f in (*.3gp) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a pcm_s16le "%~nf.caf"'. This is especially useful for converting a large archive of old mobile recordings in one pass, well beyond the 1GB browser limit of the online tool.
Technical Notes
CAF was designed by Apple specifically to overcome the 4GB file size limit of WAV and AIFF, but for typical 3GP source material — which is short-duration, mobile-captured audio — file size is not a practical concern. The more relevant detail is codec compatibility: CAF supports both lossy (AAC, Opus, Vorbis) and lossless (FLAC, PCM) codecs, but this tool defaults to pcm_s16le, which is the uncompressed 16-bit standard matching CD-quality audio. The source 3GP audio is almost certainly AAC or AMR-NB (Adaptive Multi-Rate Narrowband), the latter being extremely common on 3G phones but limited to 8kHz sample rate — converting AMR-NB audio to PCM in CAF will produce an uncompressed file at that original low sample rate, so do not expect wideband audio if the source was a phone call recording. The video stream in the 3GP file is automatically dropped since CAF has no video track support. Transparency, chapters, and subtitle streams are not present in either format, so no data of those types is lost. There is no significant metadata risk beyond what is noted — 3GP files rarely carry rich embedded tags.