Convert MOV to ALAC — Free Online Tool
Convert MOV files to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) — extracting the audio track from your QuickTime container and re-encoding it as a bit-perfect lossless audio file stored in an MPEG-4 (.m4a) container. Ideal for archiving high-quality audio from professional video recordings without any loss in fidelity.
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FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
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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
During this conversion, FFmpeg discards the video stream entirely and re-encodes the audio track from your MOV file using Apple's ALAC codec, outputting a .m4a file. If the source MOV contains AAC or PCM audio (common in QuickTime workflows), the audio is decoded to raw PCM and then losslessly compressed using ALAC — meaning the resulting file is a mathematically perfect representation of the original audio, just in a more compact, archive-friendly form. Because ALAC is lossless, no audio quality is sacrificed. Any video, subtitle, or chapter data in the MOV is stripped, as the ALAC/M4A container supports only audio streams.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg application, the open-source multimedia processing engine that performs the audio extraction and ALAC encoding. This tool runs FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly (FFmpeg.wasm) directly in your browser. |
-i input.mov
|
Specifies the input file — your QuickTime MOV file. FFmpeg will read all streams (video, audio, subtitles) from this container, though only the audio stream is used in the output. |
-c:a alac
|
Sets the audio codec to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), instructing FFmpeg to decode the source audio from the MOV and re-encode it as lossless ALAC. This is the core operation of the conversion — it appears twice in the resolved command, though once is sufficient; FFmpeg applies the last specified value. |
output.m4a
|
Specifies the output file name with the .m4a extension, which is the standard MPEG-4 audio container used to store ALAC-encoded audio. The .m4a extension ensures native compatibility with Apple Music, iTunes, iOS, and macOS without any additional configuration. |
Common Use Cases
- Extract the lossless audio recording from a Final Cut Pro or QuickTime-captured interview or voiceover session for archiving in Apple Music or iTunes
- Strip the audio track from a professional MOV master file to create an ALAC version for distribution to musicians or audio engineers who need bit-perfect fidelity
- Convert field recordings captured as MOV files on an iPhone or mirrorless camera into ALAC for long-term lossless audio archiving
- Prepare podcast or audiobook source material stored as MOV recordings in an Apple-native lossless format before mastering
- Extract the audio from a QuickTime screen recording of a music performance or tutorial for lossless playback on Apple devices via the Music app
- Archive dialogue or foley recordings from a video production as standalone ALAC files to keep a clean, lossless audio library separate from video assets
Frequently Asked Questions
No — ALAC is a lossless codec, meaning the audio is decompressed and re-encoded without any quality loss. The output .m4a file will contain audio that is bit-for-bit identical to the decoded source audio from your MOV file. This is unlike converting to MP3 or AAC, where lossy compression permanently removes audio data.
The video stream is completely discarded. ALAC stored in an M4A container is a purely audio format and cannot carry video data. Only the audio track from your MOV is retained and re-encoded as ALAC. If you need to keep the video, you should choose a video output format instead.
ALAC can encode any PCM (uncompressed) audio, so FFmpeg will first decode whatever audio codec is in your MOV — whether that's AAC, PCM, MP3, or FLAC — to raw PCM, then losslessly compress it as ALAC. One nuance: if your source MOV already uses a lossy codec like AAC, the ALAC output will be a lossless copy of that lossy audio — it won't recover quality that was already lost during the original encoding.
ALAC is a codec, not a container. The audio data encoded with ALAC is stored inside an MPEG-4 container, which uses the .m4a file extension. This is the standard and most compatible packaging for ALAC audio, and it's the format natively recognized by Apple Music, iTunes, iOS, and macOS.
You can use a shell loop to process multiple files. On macOS or Linux, run: for f in *.mov; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a alac "${f%.mov}.m4a"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.mov) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a alac "%~nf.m4a". This applies the same ALAC conversion to every MOV file in the current directory.
The M4A/ALAC container does technically support chapter markers, but FFmpeg does not automatically transfer chapter metadata from MOV to M4A in this conversion. If your MOV contains chapters you want to preserve, you would need to add the -map_chapters 0 flag to the FFmpeg command explicitly. Simpler metadata like track title and artist tags are generally carried over.
Technical Notes
MOV files from professional workflows often carry audio encoded as AAC (lossy) or as uncompressed PCM (lossless). When the source is PCM, the conversion to ALAC is a pure lossless transcode — the ALAC output is a compressed but sonically identical representation. When the source is AAC, ALAC will losslessly preserve the AAC-decoded signal, but any distortion introduced by the original AAC encoding cannot be recovered. ALAC typically achieves compression ratios of around 40–60% compared to raw PCM, so file sizes will be significantly smaller than uncompressed audio but larger than AAC at equivalent bitrates. The .m4a container preserves standard metadata tags (title, artist, album, track number), making ALAC files fully compatible with Apple Music, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, and macOS. However, the ALAC format does not support multiple audio tracks — only one audio stream from the MOV will be included in the output. Video, subtitle streams, and embedded image art from the MOV source are not carried over. ALAC is not natively supported on most Android devices or non-Apple platforms without third-party software.