Extract Audio from HEVC to AIF — Free Online Tool
Extract lossless PCM audio from HEVC/H.265 video files and save it as an AIF file — Apple's uncompressed audio format. This tool discards the H.265 video stream entirely and writes the raw audio directly to AIF using big-endian 16-bit PCM (pcm_s16be), preserving full audio fidelity with no re-compression.
to
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
HEVC (H.265) video files typically carry one or more audio streams encoded in formats like AAC, AC-3, or DTS alongside the highly compressed video. This tool strips out the video stream entirely and transcodes the audio into uncompressed PCM audio stored in Apple's AIF container. Unlike remuxing, the audio is decoded and re-encoded as raw 16-bit big-endian PCM (pcm_s16be) — the AIF format's standard codec. This means the output is not a passthrough copy; the audio is fully decoded from whatever compressed format it was in and written out as uncompressed samples. The result is a lossless AIF file whose audio quality is limited only by the quality of the original compressed audio track, not by any additional encoding step.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg media processing tool. In this browser-based tool, it runs via FFmpeg.wasm (WebAssembly) entirely in your browser — no data leaves your machine. The same command works identically in a local FFmpeg installation for files over 1GB. |
-i input.hevc
|
Specifies the input HEVC file. FFmpeg reads the container and identifies all streams inside it — in this case an H.265 video stream and at least one audio stream, which is the only stream that will be processed further. |
-vn
|
Disables video output entirely, telling FFmpeg to ignore the H.265 video stream. This is necessary because AIF is a pure audio container and cannot hold any video data — without -vn, FFmpeg would attempt and fail to mux the HEVC stream into the output. |
-c:a pcm_s16be
|
Sets the audio codec to signed 16-bit big-endian PCM, which is the standard encoding for AIF files. This decodes whatever compressed audio was in the HEVC container (e.g., AAC) and writes it out as uncompressed samples in the byte order that Apple's AIF format requires. |
output.aif
|
Specifies the output filename with the .aif extension. FFmpeg uses this extension to determine that the output container is Apple's Audio Interchange File Format, which is what wraps the pcm_s16be audio stream in a format natively readable by macOS applications. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting a high-quality audio track from an H.265-encoded film or TV episode for use in professional audio editing software like Logic Pro or Pro Tools on macOS, which natively supports AIF.
- Pulling the audio from an HEVC drone footage file to score or mix separately, where the uncompressed AIF format ensures no generation loss before adding it back to a final edit.
- Extracting dialogue or ambience from an H.265 camera recording for sound design work, where AIF's uncompressed nature is required by the audio post-production pipeline.
- Converting the audio track from an HEVC screencast or presentation recording into AIF to use as a master archive before distributing compressed versions for podcasts or web use.
- Extracting audio from HEVC-encoded concert or live performance recordings for lossless archiving on a Mac, where AIF is the preferred high-fidelity storage format.
- Separating the audio from an H.265 video file received from a camera or streaming device so it can be imported into GarageBand or Final Cut Pro's audio timeline as an uncompressed AIF clip.
Frequently Asked Questions
The conversion itself introduces no additional quality loss — the AIF output is uncompressed PCM, so the audio is not re-compressed. However, if the original audio track inside the HEVC file was already lossy (such as AAC or AC-3), that prior compression is baked in and cannot be undone. The AIF file will be a perfect lossless representation of that already-lossy audio, not a recovery of the original uncompressed source.
HEVC's primary value is its extreme video compression efficiency, but your HEVC file likely had a small, compressed audio track (e.g., AAC at 128–320 kbps). AIF stores audio as uncompressed PCM, which for stereo audio at 16-bit/44.1kHz runs about 10 MB per minute — many times larger than a compressed audio stream. The video being stripped out also means the output no longer benefits from H.265's compression. A 1-minute stereo AIF at 16-bit/44.1kHz will be roughly 10 MB regardless of how small the source HEVC file was.
The output uses pcm_s16be — signed 16-bit big-endian PCM — which is the standard codec for AIF files and ensures the broadest compatibility with Apple software and hardware. If you need higher bit depth, you can modify the FFmpeg command to use pcm_s24be for 24-bit or pcm_s32be for 32-bit by replacing pcm_s16be with your preferred codec in the -c:a flag. Most professional audio workflows on Mac will accept all of these variants.
Yes — if your HEVC file contains no audio stream, FFmpeg will error out because there is nothing to extract. Some HEVC files, particularly raw video streams with a .hevc extension, may carry no audio at all. You can verify whether your file has an audio track by running ffprobe input.hevc or checking the file's properties in a media player before attempting the extraction.
Yes. On macOS or Linux, you can batch process using a shell loop: for f in *.hevc; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a pcm_s16be "${f%.hevc}.aif"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.hevc) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a pcm_s16be "%~nf.aif". This runs the same conversion on every HEVC file in the current directory and names each AIF file after its source.
AIF has excellent native support across Apple's ecosystem. Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, GarageBand, and Pro Tools on macOS all import AIF files without requiring any additional plugins or codecs. The pcm_s16be encoding used here matches what Apple applications expect from AIF files, so your extracted audio should drop in cleanly to any of these workflows.
Technical Notes
The FFmpeg command uses -vn to drop the video stream, which is essential here because HEVC/H.265 video cannot be stored in an AIF container — AIF is an audio-only format. The audio is fully decoded from its original compressed format inside the HEVC container (commonly AAC or AC-3) and re-encoded as 16-bit big-endian PCM, which is the native sample format for AIF. The big-endian byte order (the 'be' suffix in pcm_s16be) is a defining characteristic of AIF and distinguishes it from WAV, which uses little-endian PCM. Metadata preservation is limited: AIF supports basic ID3-style tags, but most metadata embedded in an HEVC container (such as chapter markers, GPS data from drones, or multiple audio track labels) will not be carried over. If your HEVC source contains multi-channel audio (e.g., 5.1 surround), FFmpeg will preserve the channel layout in the AIF output — there is no automatic downmix to stereo unless explicitly requested. Files with HDR or spatial audio metadata in the video stream are unaffected, since -vn discards the video entirely before any processing occurs.