Extract Audio from MTS to OGA — Free Online Tool
Extract audio from AVCHD camcorder footage (MTS) and save it as an OGA file using the Vorbis codec — ideal for archiving high-quality audio from Sony or Panasonic recordings in an open, royalty-free format. The AC-3 or AAC audio track from the MPEG-2 Transport Stream is decoded and re-encoded to Ogg Vorbis, discarding the H.264 video entirely.
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FFmpeg Command
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Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
MTS files are AVCHD recordings that bundle H.264 video with AC-3 or AAC audio inside an MPEG-2 Transport Stream container. During this conversion, FFmpeg demuxes the transport stream to isolate the audio track, decodes it from AC-3 or AAC, and then re-encodes it using the Vorbis codec (libvorbis) into an Ogg container saved with the .oga extension. The video stream is completely discarded using the -vn flag. Because the source audio codec (AC-3 or AAC) is not natively compatible with the Ogg container, a full transcode — not a remux — is required. Quality is controlled via Vorbis's variable bitrate quality scale, with the default setting of -q:a 4 producing output roughly equivalent to 128 kbps, which is transparent for most spoken-word and musical content captured by a camcorder.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the open-source multimedia processing engine that handles demuxing the MPEG-2 Transport Stream, decoding the AVCHD audio, and encoding the Ogg Vorbis output. |
-i input.mts
|
Specifies the input MTS file — an AVCHD recording from a Sony or Panasonic camcorder containing H.264 video and AC-3 or AAC audio inside an MPEG-2 Transport Stream container. |
-vn
|
Disables video output entirely, ensuring the H.264 video stream from the MTS file is not processed or included in the output — producing an audio-only OGA file. |
-c:a libvorbis
|
Selects the libvorbis encoder to transcode the decoded AC-3 or AAC audio from the MTS source into the Vorbis format, which is the standard and most compatible audio codec for the Ogg container. |
-q:a 4
|
Sets the Vorbis variable bitrate quality to level 4 on a 0–10 scale, targeting approximately 128 kbps — a balanced setting that produces good-quality audio for typical camcorder recordings (speech, events, performances) without excessive file size. |
output.oga
|
Specifies the output filename with the .oga extension, which signals an audio-only Ogg container — distinct from .ogg (which may contain video) — and is the conventional extension for Ogg files containing Vorbis or FLAC audio streams. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting a voiceover or interview recorded with a Sony or Panasonic AVCHD camcorder to use in a podcast or audio project without carrying gigabytes of video data
- Archiving the audio commentary or ambient sound from camcorder footage in a compact, open-format file that can be played without proprietary codecs
- Pulling musical performance audio from an AVCHD stage recording to share with band members or upload to an audio-only platform that does not accept video
- Separating the audio track from a multi-camera MTS shoot for use in a DAW during the mixing stage, when video is handled separately
- Converting camcorder-recorded event audio (weddings, lectures, ceremonies) into a lightweight OGA file for long-term storage on open-source media servers like Jellyfin or Funkwhale
- Extracting audio from MTS footage to verify sync or check recording quality before committing to a full post-production workflow
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, there is a generation of quality loss because this conversion requires a full transcode — the AC-3 or AAC audio in the MTS file is decoded to uncompressed PCM and then re-encoded as Vorbis. Both the source and destination are lossy formats, so some audio information is lost in each encoding stage. However, at the default -q:a 4 setting (roughly 128 kbps VBR), the Vorbis output is generally considered transparent for camcorder-recorded content like speech, interviews, or ambient sound. If fidelity is critical, consider using the FLAC codec option instead, which is lossless.
Yes — OGA supports FLAC as an audio codec, which is lossless. However, the MTS source audio is already lossy (AC-3 or AAC), so encoding to FLAC will produce a lossless copy of the already-lossy decoded signal, not a recovery of the original uncompressed audio. You can achieve this by changing the FFmpeg command to use -c:a flac and removing the -q:a flag. The resulting OGA/FLAC file will be larger than a Vorbis encode but will not introduce any additional lossy compression artifacts on top of what was already present in the MTS source.
Many AVCHD camcorders record stereo audio on track 1 and sometimes a secondary audio track (such as a secondary microphone or a 5.1 surround mix) on track 2. By default, FFmpeg selects only the first audio stream it encounters, so only that track will be included in the OGA output. OGA also does not support multiple audio tracks in a single file. If you need a specific track, you can modify the command to add -map 0:a:1 (for the second audio track) before the output filename to explicitly select which stream to extract.
The quality is set by the -q:a flag, which uses Vorbis's variable bitrate quality scale from 0 (lowest, around 64 kbps) to 10 (highest, around 500 kbps). The default value of 4 targets approximately 128 kbps and suits most camcorder audio. For higher fidelity — for example, if the MTS contains a high-quality musical performance — try -q:a 6 or -q:a 8. For speech-only content where file size matters, -q:a 2 or -q:a 3 is usually sufficient. Replace the 4 in the command with your chosen value: ffmpeg -i input.mts -vn -c:a libvorbis -q:a 6 output.oga
MTS files are notoriously difficult to play without dedicated camcorder software or a media player with AVCHD support, making OGA a significant compatibility upgrade for audio-only use. OGA (Ogg Vorbis) is natively supported in Firefox, Chrome, VLC, and most Linux-based media players. However, it is not natively supported on Apple devices (iOS, macOS without third-party software) or older Windows systems without a codec pack. If Apple device compatibility is a priority, consider extracting to MP3 or AAC instead.
Yes. On Linux or macOS, you can loop through all MTS files in a folder using a shell one-liner: for f in *.mts; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 "${f%.mts}.oga"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, the equivalent is: for %f in (*.mts) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 "%~nf.oga". This is especially useful when processing an entire memory card dump from a camcorder, where dozens of MTS clips may need their audio extracted at once.
Technical Notes
MTS files recorded by AVCHD camcorders encapsulate audio as either AC-3 (Dolby Digital, common on Panasonic models) or AAC (common on Sony models) inside an MPEG-2 Transport Stream. Neither codec is compatible with the Ogg container, so this conversion always involves a full audio transcode — there is no stream-copy shortcut available. The output OGA file uses libvorbis, which implements variable bitrate encoding via the -q:a quality scale rather than a fixed target bitrate. Metadata from the MTS container (such as recording timestamps or camera model tags embedded in the transport stream) is generally not preserved in the OGA output, as Ogg Vorbis uses its own comment tag structure and FFmpeg does not automatically map AVCHD-specific metadata to Vorbis comments. If the source MTS file contains 5.1 surround AC-3 audio, libvorbis will encode all six channels into the OGA file, but playback compatibility for multi-channel Ogg Vorbis varies across players. The OGA format does not support subtitles or video streams, so any closed caption data embedded in the MTS transport stream is silently discarded during conversion.