Extract Audio from MTS to OGG — Free Online Tool
Extract audio from MTS camcorder footage and save it as an OGG Vorbis file — ideal for pulling clean AC-3 or AAC audio tracks from AVCHD recordings into an open, widely-supported audio format. The MPEG-2 Transport Stream video is discarded entirely, leaving only the re-encoded Vorbis audio stream.
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FFmpeg Command
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Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
MTS files store video and audio in an MPEG-2 Transport Stream container, typically pairing H.264 video with AC-3 (Dolby Digital) or AAC audio — common in Sony and Panasonic camcorders. During this conversion, FFmpeg reads the MTS container, strips the H.264 video stream entirely (no video decoding occurs), and decodes the AC-3 or AAC audio track. That raw audio is then re-encoded using the libvorbis encoder and packed into an OGG container. Because Vorbis uses a variable bitrate quality scale rather than a fixed bitrate target, the output quality is set via the -q:a parameter. The resulting OGG file contains only the audio — no video, no AVCHD transport stream overhead.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the open-source multimedia processing engine that handles reading the AVCHD MTS container, decoding the audio stream, and encoding the output OGG file. |
-i input.mts
|
Specifies the input MTS file — an AVCHD MPEG-2 Transport Stream containing H.264 video and typically AC-3 or AAC audio recorded by a Sony or Panasonic camcorder. |
-vn
|
Disables video output entirely, telling FFmpeg to ignore the H.264 video stream in the MTS file. Since the goal is audio extraction, this prevents any video processing and ensures the output OGG file contains only audio. |
-c:a libvorbis
|
Encodes the audio using the libvorbis encoder, producing a Vorbis audio stream — the default and most compatible audio codec for OGG containers. This re-encodes the source AC-3 or AAC audio from the MTS file into Vorbis, since OGG cannot carry those codecs natively. |
-q:a 4
|
Sets the Vorbis variable bitrate quality level to 4 on a scale of 0–10, targeting roughly 128 kbps average. This is a balanced default suitable for most camcorder audio content including speech and ambient sound captured in the field. |
output.ogg
|
Defines the output filename and tells FFmpeg to write the result as an OGG container. The .ogg extension signals the Xiph.Org OGG format, which will hold the Vorbis-encoded audio stream extracted from the original MTS recording. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting the spoken commentary or ambient sound from handheld AVCHD camcorder footage to use in a podcast or radio production
- Pulling interview audio recorded on a Sony or Panasonic camcorder in MTS format to edit in an open-source audio editor like Audacity or Ardour, which handle OGG Vorbis natively
- Archiving event audio — such as a concert, ceremony, or lecture recorded on a camcorder — in an open, patent-free format without retaining the large video file
- Preparing camcorder audio for use in a web application or HTML5 media player, where OGG Vorbis is a natively supported audio format in Firefox and Chrome
- Separating the audio track from AVCHD surveillance or field recording footage to analyze or transcribe speech without handling large video files
- Converting MTS audio to OGG for use in open-source game engines like Godot, which prefer or require OGG Vorbis for streaming audio assets
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, some quality loss is expected because this is a lossy-to-lossy transcode. The AC-3 or AAC audio in your MTS file must be fully decoded and then re-encoded as Vorbis — there is no way to copy the audio stream directly since OGG does not support AC-3 or AAC. The default quality setting (-q:a 4) produces results comparable to roughly 128 kbps and is transparent for most listeners, but each generation of re-encoding introduces some additional degradation.
Yes, libvorbis supports multichannel audio including 5.1 surround sound. If your MTS file was recorded with a Dolby AC-3 5.1 audio track — common on higher-end Sony and Panasonic AVCHD camcorders — FFmpeg will preserve the channel layout when encoding to Vorbis, so the output OGG file will also contain 5.1 audio. Playback support for multichannel OGG Vorbis depends on your media player.
Change the value after -q:a to control Vorbis quality. The scale runs from 0 (lowest quality, smallest file) to 10 (highest quality, largest file), with 4 as the default, roughly equivalent to 128 kbps. For archival or high-fidelity use, try -q:a 7 or -q:a 8. For voice-only content like interviews or lectures from a camcorder, -q:a 3 is usually sufficient and keeps file sizes smaller: ffmpeg -i input.mts -vn -c:a libvorbis -q:a 7 output.ogg
Yes. On Linux or macOS you can loop over all MTS files in a directory with: for f in *.mts; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 "${f%.mts}.ogg"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.mts) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 "%~nf.ogg". This is especially useful when pulling audio from a full memory card of AVCHD clips.
FFmpeg will attempt to copy compatible metadata tags from the MTS container into the OGG file, such as title or date fields if present. However, AVCHD-specific metadata — like GPS coordinates, camera model, or scene detection markers embedded in the MPEG-2 Transport Stream — is not standard OGG metadata and will be lost. OGG supports common tags like TITLE, ARTIST, DATE, and COMMENT via the Vorbis comment format, and any of these found in the source may carry over.
No — Apple's ecosystem, including iPhone, iPad, macOS QuickTime, and iTunes, does not natively support OGG Vorbis playback. If you need audio from your MTS camcorder footage to play on Apple devices, consider extracting to AAC in an M4A container instead. OGG Vorbis is best suited for Linux environments, open-source applications, web browsers (Firefox, Chrome), and platforms like Android that support it natively.
Technical Notes
MTS is a strict broadcast-oriented container built on the MPEG-2 Transport Stream spec, and its audio is almost always AC-3 (Dolby Digital) at 48 kHz or AAC — neither of which can be placed directly into an OGG container. This means a full decode-and-reencode pipeline is unavoidable, unlike some format conversions where audio can be stream-copied. The libvorbis encoder used here operates in variable bitrate mode when driven by -q:a, which tends to allocate more bits to complex passages and fewer to silence, making it more efficient than fixed-bitrate encoding for typical camcorder audio content. One important limitation: if your MTS file contains multiple audio tracks (some AVCHD cameras record a second scratch audio channel), FFmpeg will by default select only the first audio stream. To extract a specific track, add -map 0:a:1 (for the second audio stream) to the command. OGG supports chapters natively, but MTS does not carry chapter data, so no chapter markers will appear in the output. The OGG format is fully open and patent-free under Xiph.Org's stewardship, making it a strong archival choice for organizations with open-source or license-compliance requirements.