Extract Audio from M4V to ALAC — Free Online Tool
Extract audio from M4V video files and convert it to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), preserving every bit of the original audio quality in an iTunes-compatible .m4a container. Because M4V typically stores AAC audio and ALAC is a lossless format, this tool re-encodes the audio to ensure a perfect, losslessly compressed output without any generation loss beyond what was already in the AAC 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
This tool strips the video stream from the M4V file entirely and re-encodes the audio track into ALAC, Apple's lossless compression format, stored in an MPEG-4 (.m4a) container. M4V files most commonly carry AAC audio, which is a lossy format — meaning this conversion is not a true lossless-to-lossless transfer, but rather a lossless capture of the existing lossy audio signal. The ALAC encoder compresses the decoded PCM audio without any further quality degradation, so what you get is a bit-perfect archive of whatever audio was in the M4V. The video stream is discarded using the -vn flag, so no video re-encoding occurs and processing is relatively fast. The output .m4a file is natively recognized by iTunes, Apple Music, and all Apple devices.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg tool — in the browser this runs via FFmpeg.wasm, a WebAssembly port of FFmpeg that executes entirely client-side with no server upload. |
-i input.m4v
|
Specifies the input M4V file. FFmpeg will probe its streams, finding at minimum a video track (typically H.264) and an audio track (typically AAC) inside the MPEG-4 container. |
-vn
|
Disables video output entirely, telling FFmpeg to strip the H.264 or H.265 video stream from the M4V and produce an audio-only output. This is what makes the result a compact .m4a rather than a full video file. |
-c:a alac
|
Sets the audio codec to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), re-encoding the source AAC audio into lossless ALAC. This flag appears twice in the resolved command, which is redundant but harmless — the last instance takes effect, confirming ALAC as the output codec. |
-c:a alac
|
A duplicate of the preceding codec flag. FFmpeg processes the last -c:a value when duplicates appear, so ALAC is still correctly applied. When running this command manually, you only need to specify -c:a alac once. |
output.m4a
|
The output filename using the .m4a extension, which is the standard Apple convention for audio-only MPEG-4 files. iTunes, Apple Music, and iOS devices recognize .m4a natively and will correctly identify the ALAC codec from the container metadata. |
Common Use Cases
- Archive the audio from an iTunes-purchased M4V movie or TV episode in lossless ALAC so it integrates cleanly into an Apple Music lossless library without transcoding artifacts
- Extract the stereo or surround soundtrack from an iOS-compatible M4V video to use as a high-fidelity backing track in a DAW like Logic Pro or GarageBand, where ALAC is a preferred import format
- Preserve the audio commentary track from an M4V film rip in lossless form for long-term archival, ensuring no additional lossy compression is introduced during storage
- Convert M4V lecture or conference recordings to ALAC .m4a for playback on Apple devices without carrying the unnecessary video payload, saving storage while keeping full audio fidelity
- Prepare audio extracted from an M4V master for professional audio editing, where a lossless intermediate format like ALAC prevents cumulative quality loss through successive encode/decode cycles
- Extract music video audio from M4V files purchased through iTunes to create a lossless audio-only version that syncs with Apple's lossless streaming tier in your library
Frequently Asked Questions
Not in the strictest sense. AAC is a lossy format, so the original audio information was already partially discarded when the M4V was encoded. ALAC preserves the decoded AAC signal with perfect bit-for-bit accuracy going forward — meaning no additional quality loss is introduced by this conversion — but the audio cannot be restored to its pre-AAC state. Think of ALAC here as a lossless snapshot of a lossy source: ideal for archiving or further editing without adding generation loss.
ALAC is stored inside an MPEG-4 container, and Apple uses the .m4a extension specifically to denote audio-only MPEG-4 files. The .m4v extension signals a video-carrying MPEG-4 file, so using it for a video-stripped output would be misleading and could cause compatibility issues in iTunes and Apple Music. The .m4a container with ALAC content is the standard, natively recognized format across the entire Apple ecosystem.
FFmpeg will carry over most iTunes-style metadata atoms (title, artist, album, year, etc.) that are present in the M4V source into the output .m4a file by default. However, embedded artwork and chapter markers may or may not transfer cleanly depending on how they were stored in the source. If metadata fidelity is critical, you should inspect the output in iTunes or a tag editor like MusicBrainz Picard and re-embed artwork or tags as needed.
The audio-only ALAC .m4a will be dramatically smaller than the M4V because the video stream — which accounts for the vast majority of file size in a typical video file — is completely removed. The ALAC audio itself will generally be larger than the equivalent AAC audio (since lossless compression is less space-efficient than lossy), but audio alone is a small fraction of a video file's total size. Expect the output to be roughly 5–15% of the original M4V size depending on video length and resolution.
Yes. M4V files can contain multiple audio tracks (e.g., a main mix and a director's commentary). To select a specific track, add the -map flag to the command: for example, ffmpeg -i input.m4v -vn -map 0:a:1 -c:a alac output.m4a would select the second audio track (index 1). Without a -map flag, FFmpeg defaults to the first audio stream, which is typically the primary language mix.
Yes — on macOS or Linux you can use a shell loop: for f in *.m4v; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a alac "${f%.m4v}.m4a"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.m4v) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a alac "%~nf.m4a". This is especially useful for archiving a full iTunes video library to ALAC in one pass, and the browser-based tool is best suited for individual files up to 1GB.
Technical Notes
ALAC is Apple's answer to FLAC — a mathematically lossless codec that compresses PCM audio into an MPEG-4 container without discarding any data. When extracting audio from M4V, the source codec matters: virtually all iTunes-distributed M4V files use AAC at bitrates between 128k and 256k, so the ALAC output is a lossless encoding of a lossy signal. There is no quality configuration for ALAC because it has no quality parameter — it always produces a bit-perfect reconstruction of the decoded input at whatever sample rate and bit depth the source contained (commonly 44.1kHz/16-bit for music or 48kHz/16-bit for video soundtracks). ALAC files are natively supported in iTunes, Apple Music, QuickTime, iOS, macOS, and tvOS, but have limited support in non-Apple software; VLC and recent versions of FFmpeg handle ALAC well, while Windows Media Player and some Android players do not. If you need broad cross-platform compatibility from an M4V extraction, FLAC or a high-bitrate MP3 would be more practical choices. Note that DRM-protected M4V files (FairPlay-encrypted iTunes purchases) cannot be processed by FFmpeg; only DRM-free M4V files will work with this tool.