Convert Y4M to WAV — Free Online Tool
Extract and convert the audio track from a Y4M (YUV4MPEG2) uncompressed video file into a WAV file encoded with 16-bit signed PCM (pcm_s16le). This is useful when you need broadcast-ready, lossless audio from an intermediate video format used in professional video pipelines.
to
FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
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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:
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DownloadHow It Works
Y4M is a raw, uncompressed video container commonly used as an intermediate format when piping video data between tools like FFmpeg, x264, or VapourSynth. While Y4M stores raw YUV video frames, it can also carry uncompressed audio. This conversion discards the raw video stream entirely and extracts only the audio, encoding it into a WAV container using the pcm_s16le codec — 16-bit signed little-endian PCM. Because both the source audio in Y4M and the target WAV format are uncompressed, there is no audio quality degradation in this conversion. The output WAV file is a standard, widely compatible lossless audio file suitable for use in virtually any audio editor, DAW, or broadcast workflow.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg command-line tool, the open-source multimedia processing engine that powers this conversion both in the browser (via FFmpeg.wasm) and on the desktop. |
-i input.y4m
|
Specifies the input file in Y4M (YUV4MPEG2) format — a raw, uncompressed video container commonly used as an intermediate format in video encoding pipelines. FFmpeg reads both the raw video frames and any embedded audio stream from this file. |
-c:a pcm_s16le
|
Sets the audio codec for the output to pcm_s16le — 16-bit signed little-endian PCM — which is the standard uncompressed audio encoding used in WAV files and ensures maximum compatibility with audio editors, DAWs, and broadcast systems. |
output.wav
|
Specifies the output filename and container. The .wav extension tells FFmpeg to wrap the extracted PCM audio stream in the WAV container format. No video data from the Y4M input is written to this file — only the audio stream is preserved. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting the audio reference track from a Y4M intermediate file produced during a lossless video encoding pipeline to review or archive separately
- Pulling audio from a Y4M file generated by a VapourSynth or AviSynth script to use in a DAW like Audacity, Reaper, or Pro Tools for further editing
- Isolating the soundtrack from a Y4M test sequence used in codec benchmarking so it can be compared or synchronized with other audio sources
- Converting Y4M files with embedded audio into WAV for import into video editing tools that do not natively support the Y4M container but handle WAV natively
- Archiving the audio component of a Y4M master file in a more storage-efficient and universally readable format before discarding the large raw video file
- Separating audio from a Y4M pipe output during a live FFmpeg encoding chain to create a standalone WAV file for quality assurance review
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Y4M files typically carry uncompressed PCM audio, and WAV with the pcm_s16le codec is also fully uncompressed. The conversion is a lossless remux of the audio stream — no decoding or re-encoding artifacts are introduced. The only potential consideration is bit depth: if the source audio is 24-bit or 32-bit, encoding to pcm_s16le will reduce it to 16-bit, which truncates the lower bits of precision.
Y4M is primarily a raw video format, and many Y4M files in the wild contain no audio track at all — the format was designed for video piping and does not require audio. If your Y4M file was produced without an explicit audio stream (e.g., piped from a script that only outputs video), FFmpeg will have nothing to extract and will produce either a silent or empty WAV. You can verify by running 'ffprobe input.y4m' and checking whether an audio stream is listed.
pcm_s16le stands for Pulse Code Modulation, signed 16-bit, little-endian. It is the most universally compatible form of uncompressed audio in the WAV format and is what most applications expect when they open a WAV file. 'Signed 16-bit' means each audio sample is stored as a 16-bit integer ranging from -32768 to 32767, and 'little-endian' refers to the byte order used, which is the standard on x86/x64 systems.
Yes. The FFmpeg command can be modified by replacing '-c:a pcm_s16le' with '-c:a pcm_s24le' for 24-bit audio or '-c:a pcm_s32le' for 32-bit audio. WAV supports all of these PCM variants. For example: 'ffmpeg -i input.y4m -c:a pcm_s24le output.wav'. This is especially relevant if your Y4M source carries high-precision audio from a professional recording or synthesis pipeline.
On Linux or macOS, you can use a shell loop: 'for f in *.y4m; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a pcm_s16le "${f%.y4m}.wav"; done'. On Windows Command Prompt, use: 'for %f in (*.y4m) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a pcm_s16le "%~nf.wav"'. Each Y4M file will be processed sequentially and produce a corresponding WAV file with the same base filename.
Y4M stores raw, uncompressed YUV video frames, which are extraordinarily large — a single minute of 1080p Y4M video can easily exceed several gigabytes. The WAV output contains only the audio stream, stripping all of the video data entirely. Even uncompressed 16-bit stereo audio at 48kHz is only about 11 MB per minute, so the size difference between a Y4M file and its extracted WAV audio is expected to be dramatic.
Technical Notes
Y4M (YUV4MPEG2) is not a general-purpose media container — it was designed specifically as a lightweight wrapper for raw YUV frames to simplify piping between command-line tools. Audio support in Y4M is minimal and not universally implemented; many tools that produce Y4M output simply omit the audio stream. When audio is present, it is typically stored as raw PCM interleaved with the video frames. WAV, by contrast, is a mature and broadly supported audio container with excellent compatibility across operating systems, DAWs, broadcast hardware, and editing software. The default codec used here, pcm_s16le, is CD-quality uncompressed audio and is accepted by virtually every audio application. No metadata such as chapter markers or embedded album art is carried by either format, so no metadata loss occurs. One important limitation: because Y4M files are uncompressed, they are frequently very large, and the browser-based tool supports files up to 1GB — if your Y4M file exceeds this, the displayed FFmpeg command can be run locally on the desktop without size restrictions.