MyMediaTools

Convert HEVC to AMR — Free Online Tool

Convert HEVC video files to AMR audio by extracting and transcoding the audio stream using the libopencore_amrnb codec at 12.2 kbps — the highest quality AMR-NB bitrate, optimized for speech. This conversion strips the H.265 video entirely and produces a compact, mobile-telephony-compatible audio file ideal for voice content.

FFmpeg Command

Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg

Free — no uploads, no signups. Your files never leave your browser.

Estimated output:

Conversion Complete!

Download

How It Works

HEVC (H.265) is a video container with both video and audio streams. During this conversion, FFmpeg discards the video stream entirely and targets only the audio track, transcoding it through the libopencore_amrnb encoder into Adaptive Multi-Rate Narrowband format. AMR-NB operates at fixed bitrates between 4.75 and 12.2 kbps and uses a codec designed specifically for human speech — it applies voice activity detection and efficient speech modeling rather than general-purpose audio compression. The result is an extremely small .amr file, but one that is only suitable for voice or speech content. Music, ambient sound, or complex audio will sound degraded because AMR's psychoacoustic model is tuned exclusively for the 300–3400 Hz frequency range of human speech.

What Each Flag Does

Flag What it does
ffmpeg Invokes the FFmpeg multimedia processing tool. In the browser-based version of this tool, FFmpeg runs locally via WebAssembly (FFmpeg.wasm) — no data is sent to a server. When run on your desktop, this calls your locally installed FFmpeg binary.
-i input.hevc Specifies the input file — an HEVC/H.265 encoded video file. FFmpeg will parse both the video stream (H.265) and any audio streams present; in this conversion, only the audio stream will be used.
-c:a libopencore_amrnb Sets the audio encoder to libopencore_amrnb, which implements the 3GPP AMR Narrowband codec. This transcodes the source audio (typically AAC or AC3 from an HEVC file) into AMR-NB format, targeting the 300–3400 Hz speech frequency range at 8 kHz sample rate.
-b:a 12200 Sets the AMR-NB encoding mode to 12,200 bps (12.2 kbps), which corresponds to mode MR122 — the highest quality and highest bitrate available in the AMR-NB specification. This produces the most intelligible speech output while still remaining extremely compact compared to formats like AAC or MP3.
output.amr Defines the output filename with the .amr extension, which triggers FFmpeg to use the AMR file muxer. The resulting file will carry the standard IETF AMR header and be playable on GSM mobile devices, VoIP platforms, and any software that supports the AMR-NB format.

Common Use Cases

  • Extracting voice memos or spoken commentary recorded in HEVC format on modern iPhones or Android devices and converting them to AMR for submission to mobile telephony systems or VoIP platforms that require AMR input.
  • Converting HEVC screen recordings of video calls or lectures into AMR audio files for archival in telecoms-compatible storage systems that catalog voice recordings.
  • Preparing speech-only audio from HEVC interview footage for upload to legacy mobile messaging systems or IVR (Interactive Voice Response) platforms that accept AMR but not MP3 or AAC.
  • Stripping and compressing narration tracks from H.265 tutorial videos into ultra-compact AMR files for distribution over low-bandwidth mobile networks in regions where data costs are high.
  • Converting HEVC footage of voice-only content (such as recorded phone screens during calls) into AMR format to feed into speech recognition pipelines or transcription services that accept AMR-NB input.
  • Extracting dialogue audio from HEVC clips to create AMR ringtones or notification sounds for older GSM-based mobile devices that natively play AMR audio.

Frequently Asked Questions

No — this conversion involves significant lossy transcoding. Even at the maximum AMR-NB bitrate of 12.2 kbps, the codec only faithfully reproduces the 300–3400 Hz frequency range of human speech. Any audio in your HEVC file that contains music, background noise, stereo channels, or frequencies outside that narrow band will be discarded or heavily distorted. If your HEVC source has AAC or AC3 audio at high bitrates, you will lose most of the audio fidelity in this conversion. AMR is appropriate only when the source audio is clean speech.
AMR-NB (Narrowband) is a codec defined by the 3GPP telecoms standard, which specifies exactly eight fixed modes ranging from 4.75 kbps to 12.2 kbps. These modes were designed to allow mobile networks to dynamically switch between bitrates based on network congestion while maintaining call continuity. Unlike MP3 or AAC, you cannot set arbitrary bitrates — the encoder selects the closest valid mode. At 12.2 kbps (mode 7, also known as MR122), you get the best speech intelligibility AMR-NB can produce.
Not at all. The video stream in your HEVC file — whether it's 720p, 4K, or 8K, and regardless of H.265 CRF quality settings — is completely discarded during this conversion. Only the audio track is processed. The output AMR file size and quality depend entirely on the audio content and the selected AMR bitrate, not on the video dimensions or codec parameters.
Replace the value after -b:a with any of the valid AMR-NB bitrate modes: 4750, 5150, 5900, 6700, 7400, 7950, or 10200 (in addition to the default 12200). For example, use '-b:a 4750' for the smallest possible file at the lowest intelligibility. For a speech recording that will be played back through a phone speaker, 7950 or 10200 typically offers an acceptable tradeoff between size and clarity. The command would look like: ffmpeg -i input.hevc -c:a libopencore_amrnb -b:a 7950 output.amr
Yes. On Linux or macOS, you can use a shell loop: for f in *.hevc; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libopencore_amrnb -b:a 12200 "${f%.hevc}.amr"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.hevc) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a libopencore_amrnb -b:a 12200 "%~nf.amr". This will process each HEVC file in the current directory and produce a corresponding AMR file. The browser-based tool processes one file at a time, so the FFmpeg command is especially useful for bulk conversions of large collections.
If the HEVC file has no audio stream, FFmpeg will throw an error and produce no output — AMR is a pure audio format with no video component, so there is nothing to convert. If the file has multiple audio tracks, FFmpeg will by default select the first audio stream (usually the primary language track) and transcode only that one into AMR. AMR does not support multiple audio tracks in a single file, so secondary tracks, commentary, or alternate language audio will be silently dropped. You can target a specific track with '-map 0:a:1' to select the second audio stream if needed.

Technical Notes

AMR-NB, encoded here via libopencore_amrnb, is a mono-only codec — if your HEVC file's audio track is stereo or surround, FFmpeg will automatically downmix it to mono before encoding. This is a hard limitation of the AMR-NB specification. The output .amr file uses the IETF storage format with the magic header '#!AMR
', which is compatible with most mobile devices and telecoms middleware. Metadata from the HEVC source (title tags, language tags, timestamps) is not carried over into the AMR container, which has no standardized metadata block. One important compatibility note: libopencore_amrnb produces AMR-NB (narrowband, 8 kHz sample rate); if you need AMR-WB (wideband, 16 kHz, better quality), you would use the libopencore_amrwb codec instead, though AMR-WB has a different and more limited set of supported playback devices. For files larger than 1GB — such as long HEVC recordings — the displayed FFmpeg command can be run locally on your desktop without the browser's memory constraints.

Related Tools

Convert HEVC to M4A Convert HEVC to WEBA Convert HEVC to MP3 Convert MXF to AMR Convert MPEG to AMR Convert ALAC to AMR Compress HEVC Extract Audio HEVC to MP3