Extract Audio from VOB to AIFF — Free Online Tool
Extract lossless AIFF audio from VOB files ripped from DVD discs. This tool decodes the AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio track embedded in your VOB file and re-encodes it as uncompressed PCM audio in AIFF format — ideal for archiving DVD audio at full fidelity on macOS.
to
FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
Drop your VOB file here
or click to browse
Free — no uploads, no signups. Your files never leave your browser.
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
VOB files store audio as AC3 (Dolby Digital) — a compressed, lossy multichannel format used on DVD-Video. During this conversion, FFmpeg discards the MPEG-2 video stream entirely and decodes the AC3 audio to raw PCM samples, which are then written into an AIFF container using the pcm_s16be codec (16-bit big-endian signed PCM). Because AC3 is lossy and AIFF is lossless/uncompressed, this is a lossy-to-lossless transcode — the AIFF file will be a perfect, uncompressed representation of the audio quality already present in the VOB, but no quality originally lost by AC3 compression can be recovered. The resulting file will be significantly larger than the source audio stream.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg multimedia processing engine, which runs here as a WebAssembly binary inside your browser with no server involvement. |
-i input.vob
|
Specifies the input VOB file. FFmpeg automatically detects the VOB container and identifies the multiplexed MPEG-2 video, AC3 audio, and any subtitle streams inside it. |
-vn
|
Disables all video output streams. Since this is an audio extraction tool, the MPEG-2 video track from the VOB is completely discarded and never decoded, saving processing time. |
-c:a pcm_s16be
|
Decodes the AC3 audio from the VOB and re-encodes it as 16-bit big-endian signed PCM — the standard uncompressed codec for AIFF files on Apple systems. This produces a lossless representation of the decoded AC3 audio. |
output.aiff
|
Sets the output filename and format. The .aiff extension tells FFmpeg to wrap the pcm_s16be audio stream in an Audio Interchange File Format container, which is natively supported by macOS, Logic Pro, GarageBand, and most professional audio applications. |
Common Use Cases
- Archiving the audio from a DVD concert recording or live performance disc into a lossless format for long-term storage on macOS
- Extracting dialogue or narration from a DVD-based training or educational disc to edit in Logic Pro or GarageBand, which natively support AIFF
- Pulling the stereo or surround mix from a DVD film rip to use as source material in a professional audio post-production workflow
- Converting DVD audio tracks to AIFF for import into Final Cut Pro X projects where native Apple format compatibility is preferred
- Extracting original soundtrack audio from a DVD music release to compare or archive before lossy re-compression to MP3 or AAC for distribution
- Recovering the audio from a damaged or incomplete DVD rip where only the VOB file remains, preserving it in an editable, uncompressed format
Frequently Asked Questions
No — the audio in a VOB file is encoded as AC3 (Dolby Digital), which is a lossy format. Converting it to AIFF produces an uncompressed copy of what remains after the AC3 compression was originally applied. AIFF preserves that quality perfectly without any further degradation, but it cannot restore detail that AC3 already discarded. Think of it as making a lossless copy of a lossy original.
AC3 audio in VOB files is heavily compressed — a 5.1 surround AC3 stream typically runs at 192–448 kbps. AIFF with pcm_s16be stores raw uncompressed PCM samples, which for stereo audio at 44.1 kHz requires about 1.4 Mbps and scales up further for higher sample rates or multichannel content. A typical DVD audio track that occupies 200 MB of AC3 data can expand to over 1 GB as uncompressed AIFF.
Yes — FFmpeg will decode the multichannel AC3 stream and write all channels into the AIFF file as interleaved PCM. However, AIFF has limited standardized support for channel layouts beyond stereo, and some applications may not correctly interpret a 6-channel AIFF as 5.1. If your downstream tool requires discrete surround handling, consider using a WAV container instead, which has broader multichannel support.
By default, FFmpeg selects the first audio stream it finds in the VOB, which is typically the primary language track. VOB files ripped from DVDs frequently contain multiple audio streams. To extract a specific track, you can modify the command by adding '-map 0:a:1' (for the second audio stream, zero-indexed) before the output filename. The tool page displays the exact FFmpeg command you can customize locally for this purpose.
Yes — replace '-c:a pcm_s16be' with '-c:a pcm_s24be' in the command to produce 24-bit big-endian PCM output. AIFF supports pcm_s16be, pcm_s24be, pcm_s32be, pcm_f32be, and pcm_f64be. In practice, since the source AC3 audio is lossy and typically mastered at 16-bit quality for DVD, using 24-bit output increases file size without recovering additional audio information. 16-bit is sufficient for archiving DVD-sourced audio.
Yes — on macOS or Linux you can use a shell loop: 'for f in *.vob; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a pcm_s16be "${f%.vob}.aiff"; done'. On Windows (Command Prompt) use: 'for %f in (*.vob) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a pcm_s16be "%~nf.aiff"'. This is especially useful for DVD rips that are split across multiple VOB files like VTS_01_1.vob, VTS_01_2.vob, etc. The in-browser tool handles files up to 1 GB individually.
Technical Notes
VOB files on DVD-Video discs almost always carry AC3 (Dolby Digital) as the primary audio codec, though some DVDs include DTS, MPEG-1 Layer 2, or even LPCM audio tracks — this command targets the default stream selection. AIFF uses big-endian byte order for its PCM samples (pcm_s16be), which reflects its Apple/Motorola heritage and distinguishes it from WAV, which uses little-endian PCM (pcm_s16le). This byte order difference is handled transparently by FFmpeg. Metadata preservation is minimal: VOB files do not carry rich ID3-style tags, and AIFF's metadata support (stored in MARK, NAME, and ANNO chunks) is not automatically populated from VOB source data, so track titles, album names, and artist information will not transfer. If the VOB contains subtitle streams or multiple audio tracks, only audio is processed — '-vn' explicitly suppresses any video output, and subtitles are ignored. For very large DVD rips split across multiple numbered VOB files (e.g., VTS_01_1.vob through VTS_01_5.vob), FFmpeg can concatenate them using the concat demuxer before extraction, which is not handled by this single-file browser tool but is possible via the desktop command.