Convert MPEG to ALAC — Free Online Tool
Convert MPEG video files to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) .m4a files, extracting and losslessly compressing the audio track — typically MP2 or MP3 — into a format fully compatible with iTunes, Apple Music, and the broader Apple ecosystem. The original lossy MPEG audio is decoded once and re-encoded into ALAC, preserving maximum quality from the source.
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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
MPEG files (.mpeg, .mpg) contain MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video streams alongside audio encoded in MP2, MP3, or occasionally AAC. This conversion discards the video stream entirely and focuses on the audio track. The MP2 or MP3 audio is fully decoded from its lossy compressed form back to raw PCM audio, and then re-encoded using Apple's ALAC codec into an MPEG-4 container (.m4a). Because ALAC is lossless, it captures the decoded audio with perfect fidelity — meaning no additional quality is lost beyond what was already lost when the original MPEG was created. The resulting .m4a file will be larger than the original MPEG audio track, since ALAC compresses losslessly rather than discarding data like MP2 does.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg program, the open-source multimedia processing engine that powers this conversion both in the browser (via WebAssembly) and on the desktop. |
-i input.mpeg
|
Specifies the input MPEG file. FFmpeg will detect whether the file contains MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video and identify the audio codec (typically MP2) automatically from the stream headers. |
-c:a alac
|
Sets the audio codec to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec). FFmpeg decodes the source MP2 or MP3 audio to raw PCM and then re-encodes it losslessly using ALAC, producing audio perfectly faithful to the decoded source. |
-c:a alac
|
A second instance of the ALAC audio codec flag, which is redundant but harmless — FFmpeg applies the last valid value for any repeated flag, so ALAC encoding is still correctly applied to the output. |
output.m4a
|
The output filename with the .m4a extension, which tells FFmpeg to wrap the ALAC audio stream in an MPEG-4 container — the standard format for ALAC files and the one natively recognized by iTunes, Apple Music, and all Apple devices. |
Common Use Cases
- Archiving the audio from old broadcast recordings, home video DVDs, or VHS-captured MPEG files into a lossless format for long-term preservation in an iTunes or Apple Music library
- Extracting a music performance or live concert recorded in MPEG format to create a high-fidelity audio file playable on iPhone, iPad, or Mac without any further quality degradation
- Pulling dialogue or narration audio from legacy MPEG training videos or corporate presentations to use in Apple-ecosystem audio editing workflows
- Preparing audio from MPEG broadcast captures for use in Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro projects, where ALAC .m4a files integrate natively without transcoding
- Converting a collection of MPEG files from an older camcorder or DVD authoring system into lossless audio archives before the source media degrades further
- Stripping video from MPEG files to produce clean audio tracks that can be synced with Apple devices via iTunes without re-encoding losses in the future
Frequently Asked Questions
No — the MPEG audio (typically MP2 at 192kbps) was encoded with lossy compression when the MPEG file was originally created, and that quality loss cannot be recovered. What ALAC guarantees is that no additional quality is lost during or after this conversion. The decoded MP2 audio is captured bit-perfectly in the ALAC container, making it the highest-fidelity representation possible from your source file.
MP2, the most common audio codec in MPEG files, achieves small file sizes through lossy compression — it permanently discards audio data the encoder deems inaudible. ALAC is lossless, meaning it retains every sample of the decoded audio without permanent data loss, which requires more storage space. Expect the ALAC .m4a to be noticeably larger than an equivalent MP2 or MP3 file of the same duration, though still smaller than an uncompressed WAV or AIFF.
MPEG files (.mpeg/.mpg) carry very limited metadata — typically just basic stream information rather than music tags like artist, album, or track title. The ALAC .m4a container supports rich ID3-style metadata through the iTunes tagging system, but since the source MPEG likely has no embedded tags, the output file will also lack them. You can add metadata manually in iTunes, Apple Music, or a tag editor like MusicBrainz Picard after conversion.
Yes — ALAC was developed by Apple and is natively supported across the entire Apple ecosystem including iTunes, Apple Music, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, and Mac. The .m4a container is the standard delivery format Apple uses for lossless audio in the Apple Music streaming service. No additional software or plugins are needed to play ALAC .m4a files on any Apple device.
The displayed command — 'ffmpeg -i input.mpeg -c:a alac output.m4a' — runs identically on your local machine if you have FFmpeg installed. Simply replace 'input.mpeg' with your actual file path and run it in a terminal. There is no file size limit when running FFmpeg locally, making it ideal for long broadcast recordings or large MPEG archives that exceed the browser tool's 1GB limit.
Yes. On Linux or macOS, you can use a shell loop: 'for f in *.mpeg; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a alac "${f%.mpeg}.m4a"; done'. On Windows Command Prompt, use: 'for %f in (*.mpeg) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a alac "%~nf.m4a"'. Each MPEG file will have its audio extracted and saved as a separate ALAC .m4a file with the same base filename.
Technical Notes
MPEG containers (.mpeg, .mpg) most commonly carry MP2 audio encoded at 192kbps, though MP3 and AAC audio are also valid within the MPEG-2 standard. All three are lossy formats, meaning the PCM audio that ALAC will losslessly encode is the decoded output of that lossy stream — not the original studio audio. ALAC stores audio in an MPEG-4 container (.m4a), which supports chapters (useful if archiving long recordings), but does not support multiple simultaneous audio tracks or embedded subtitles. MPEG files also do not carry subtitle or chapter data in a form FFmpeg can map to the .m4a container, so no data of that type will be lost. One known consideration: some MPEG files captured from analog sources or old broadcast equipment may have audio sync drift or non-standard sample rates; FFmpeg handles most of these gracefully, but very malformed MPEG streams may require the '-fflags +genpts' flag to process correctly. The FFmpeg command includes '-c:a alac' twice due to the way this tool resolves format flags; the second instance is the effective one and the duplicate is harmless.