MyMediaTools

Convert MOV to AIFC — Free Online Tool

Convert MOV video files to AIFC audio, extracting the audio stream and encoding it as big-endian PCM using the pcm_s16be codec — ideal for professional audio workflows on Apple platforms that require AIFF-compatible compressed or lossless audio.

FFmpeg Command

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Estimated output:

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How It Works

During this conversion, FFmpeg discards the video stream entirely and extracts only the audio track from the MOV container. The audio — which in a MOV file is typically encoded as AAC or another compressed format — is re-encoded to 16-bit big-endian PCM (pcm_s16be) and wrapped in the AIFC container. This means the audio undergoes a decode-then-re-encode process: the source codec (e.g., AAC) is fully decoded to raw PCM, then written out as uncompressed big-endian signed 16-bit samples at the original sample rate. AIFC supports both compressed and uncompressed audio, but pcm_s16be produces uncompressed lossless output, meaning the final AIFC file will be significantly larger than the AAC audio in the original MOV but will have no further lossy degradation.

What Each Flag Does

Flag What it does
ffmpeg Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the open-source multimedia processing engine that powers this conversion both in the browser via WebAssembly and on your local desktop command line.
-i input.mov Specifies the input file — a MOV (QuickTime) container that may contain video, audio, and metadata tracks. FFmpeg will demux all available streams from this file before processing.
-c:a pcm_s16be Sets the audio codec to 16-bit signed big-endian PCM, which is the native uncompressed format for AIFC. This decodes whatever compressed audio codec is in the MOV (typically AAC) and re-encodes it as raw, lossless 16-bit samples in big-endian byte order as required by the AIFF/AIFC specification.
-b:a 128k Specifies an audio bitrate of 128 kbps. For uncompressed PCM codecs like pcm_s16be, the actual bitrate is determined by the sample rate, bit depth, and channel count rather than this parameter — for 16-bit stereo at 44.1 kHz it will be approximately 1411 kbps regardless. This flag has no practical effect on pcm_s16be output and can be omitted when running the command locally.
output.aifc Defines the output filename with the .aifc extension, which tells FFmpeg to use the AIFF-C container format. The file extension is what triggers FFmpeg's format muxer selection — using .aiff instead would also work but .aifc explicitly signals compressed AIFF support to downstream Apple applications.

Common Use Cases

  • Extracting dialogue or narration audio from a Final Cut Pro or QuickTime-exported MOV to import into Logic Pro or Pro Tools, which commonly work with AIFF/AIFC assets
  • Preparing audio from a MOV screen recording or presentation for use in an Apple-ecosystem audio editing pipeline that requires big-endian PCM format
  • Archiving the audio track of a MOV video in an uncompressed lossless format for long-term preservation on Apple storage systems
  • Stripping the audio from a MOV interview recording to deliver a clean AIFC file to a broadcast facility whose ingest system requires AIFF-family formats
  • Converting a MOV music video or live performance recording to AIFC to use the isolated audio in GarageBand or other AIFF-native Mac audio tools
  • Separating the audio stem from a MOV export out of Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve for delivery to a mastering engineer who works with AIFC on macOS

Frequently Asked Questions

If the audio in your MOV file is AAC (the most common case), there will be one generation of lossy decoding, but the output AIFC file with pcm_s16be is itself lossless PCM — no further compression is applied. Think of it as 'freezing' the audio at its current decoded quality with no additional degradation. If your MOV already contains lossless or uncompressed audio (such as PCM), the conversion to AIFC pcm_s16be is entirely lossless end-to-end, assuming the bit depth doesn't require reduction.
The MOV file typically stores audio as AAC, which is a highly compressed lossy format at around 128–256 kbps. AIFC with pcm_s16be stores raw uncompressed audio at CD quality (16-bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz), which requires approximately 10 MB per minute. A 10-minute MOV with AAC audio might produce an AIFC file 50–100x larger in audio-only terms, because no compression is applied to the output samples.
Yes. By default, FFmpeg preserves the original sample rate from the source audio stream when converting to AIFC pcm_s16be. If your MOV audio was recorded at 48 kHz (common in video production), the AIFC output will also be 48 kHz. You can explicitly resample using the -ar flag in the FFmpeg command if your target application requires a specific rate such as 44.1 kHz.
No. AIFC is a pure audio container — it cannot store video data. FFmpeg automatically drops the video stream when writing to an AIFC output file. Only the first audio track from the MOV will be included; if your MOV has multiple audio tracks, only the default track is extracted unless you specify otherwise with stream mapping flags.
Replace pcm_s16be with another supported codec to change bit depth. For 24-bit audio use -c:a pcm_s24be, for 32-bit integer use -c:a pcm_s32be, and for 32-bit float use -c:a pcm_f32be. Higher bit depths preserve more dynamic range and are preferred in professional mastering workflows. For example: ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:a pcm_s24be output.aifc
Yes. On macOS or Linux you can loop over files in a directory using a shell loop: for f in *.mov; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a pcm_s16be "${f%.mov}.aifc"; done. On Windows Command Prompt use: for %f in (*.mov) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a pcm_s16be "%~nf.aifc". This is especially useful for batch-extracting audio from a folder of MOV exports, and works for files over 1GB that you process locally rather than in the browser tool.

Technical Notes

AIFC (Audio Interchange File Format Compressed) is Apple's extension of the original AIFF format, designed to support both uncompressed PCM and various compressed codecs within the same container structure. All PCM variants in AIFC use big-endian byte ordering, which is a legacy of the Motorola 68000 architecture used in early Macs — this distinguishes AIFC from WAV, which uses little-endian PCM. The default codec for this conversion, pcm_s16be, produces 16-bit signed big-endian samples and is the most universally readable variant across Apple software. MOV files frequently contain AAC audio encoded at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz; FFmpeg will decode this to raw PCM before writing AIFC, preserving the channel count and sample rate unless you override them. Metadata embedded in the MOV (such as title or artist tags) is generally not carried over to AIFC, as AIFC has limited metadata chunk support compared to MOV. Chapters and subtitle tracks present in the MOV are silently dropped, as AIFC does not support these features. If your MOV source contains multichannel audio (e.g., 5.1 surround), pcm_s16be will encode all channels, but compatibility with stereo-only AIFC readers should be verified for your target application.

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