MOV → WAV
MOV to WAV converter
The audio track is pulled out of the QuickTime container and written as uncompressed PCM WAV. The video stream is dropped, and the audio is not put through another lossy codec.
…or drag files and folders here. Add as many as you like — everything is processed on this device.
.3g2 .3gp .m4a .m4v .mkv .mov .mp4 .qt .weba .webm
In one paragraph
Editors reach for this conversion when a camera or phone recorded the only usable copy of the sound: a wedding speech, an interview captured on the B-camera, a rehearsal filmed on an iPhone. A DAW, a dialogue-cleanup tool or a sync utility like PluralEyes wants a plain WAV it can line up against the timeline, not a video file.
Sonic Batch demuxes the MOV with FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly, discards the video stream without decoding it, and writes the audio as RIFF PCM at the bit depth you choose. If the camera recorded PCM — common on Canon, Sony and Zoom field recorders — the WAV is a sample-for-sample copy; if it recorded AAC, the WAV holds exactly what the AAC decoder produces, with no second lossy generation.
Does this change the audio quality?
Writing PCM adds no further loss. Quality is capped by what the camera recorded: a PCM track comes through untouched, while an AAC track sounds exactly as the AAC did — the WAV cannot restore detail the camera’s encoder discarded.
- Only the first audio track is extracted. In multi-track camera files, any further audio tracks are left out.
- WAV is large: about 15 MB per stereo minute at 48 kHz/24-bit, regardless of how small the video’s audio track was.
- Video files count against the 400 MB per-file budget in full, even though only the audio is kept. Export a shorter clip from your video app if a long 4K file is rejected.
A worked example
Syncing B-camera sound with a field recorder
- Drop the MOV clips into the queue. Each row shows the duration straight away, and the audio codec and sample rate once the engine has read the file.
- Leave Bit depth at 24 and the sample rate on “Same as source”, so the WAV matches the 48 kHz timeline the camera shot against.
- Convert all — the video streams are skipped, so each job takes a fraction of the clip length.
- Download the ZIP and import the WAVs into your editor or sync tool alongside the recorder files.
Keep the camera’s 48 kHz and use 24-bit
Video is almost always shot with 48 kHz audio, and that is the rate your edit timeline runs at. Resampling to 44.1 kHz here would only add a conversion step you have to undo later. Choose 24-bit when the WAV is going into a mix, where gain and EQ need headroom; 16-bit is fine if the file is only for transcription or a rough listen.
Supported formats, limits and browser notes
Sonic Batch decodes with the browser when it can (faster, no engine download) and falls back to the self-hosted WebAssembly engine when it cannot. Every combination below works in every listed browser; the column only tells you which decoder does the work.
| Input | What it is | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | iOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MOV | QuickTime video from iPhone and DSLR cameras. Audio is normally AAC or PCM. | Partial | Engine | Native | Native |
| MP4 | The standard video container. Its audio track is almost always AAC. | Native | Partial | Native | Native |
| WebM | Open container used by browser recorders and YouTube downloads. Audio is Opus or Vorbis. | Native | Native | Partial | Partial |
| 3GP | Legacy phone recording container, normally AMR-NB or low-bitrate AAC audio. | Engine | Engine | Partial | Partial |
| M4A | Apple’s default AAC container. Better quality than MP3 at the same bitrate. | Native | Native | Native | Native |
| Output | Encoder | Bitrates / depth | Sample rates | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WAV | pcm_s16le | 16, 24, 32-bit | 8–96 kHz | Yes |
- Max per file
- 400.0 MB
- Max per queue
- 4.00 GB
- Max duration
- 4:00:00
- Max archive
- 1.50 GB
These are enforced ceilings, checked before any decoding starts, not measured maximums — a file over the limit is rejected rather than allowed to exhaust the tab’s memory. Real-world capacity is lower on older phones, which is why the scheduler runs one file at a time on iOS and Safari.
Where your audio goes
Nowhere. Your file is read from disk into this browser tab with the File API, decoded and encoded by code running in that same tab, and handed back to you as a download. It is never transmitted.
That is a structural property of the application, not a policy promise: there are no API routes, no server actions and no third-party processing services in this project, so there is nothing capable of receiving a file. The page’s Content-Security-Policy also restricts connections to this origin, and the automated test suite includes a browser test that fails if any network request during import, preview, conversion or download carries media bytes.
The trade-off, stated plainly: results live in your tab’s memory until you download them. Closing or reloading the page discards them. There is nothing on a server to recover, because nothing was ever put there.
Troubleshooting
It says no audio stream was found.
Screen recordings made without microphone or system-audio permission contain no audio track at all. Play the clip first; if it is silent there, there is nothing to extract.
The WAV drifts out of sync with the video in my editor.
Check that the WAV kept the source sample rate. If you forced 44.1 kHz on a 48 kHz clip, some editors interpret the file at the wrong rate. Set the sample rate back to “Same as source” and convert again.
Firefox cannot preview the MOV.
Firefox has no QuickTime demuxer, so the browser cannot play it. Conversion still works because the WebAssembly engine reads the container itself.
Frequently asked questions
Is MOV to WAV lossless?
The step from the camera’s audio to WAV adds no loss. Whether the result is lossless overall depends on the camera: PCM tracks are copied exactly; AAC tracks were already lossy when they were recorded.
Why WAV rather than MP3?
WAV is what editing, mixing and sync software works with natively, and it avoids a second lossy encode. If you only need something small to listen to or share, the MOV to MP3 page is the better fit.
Does it work with iPhone videos?
Yes. iPhone videos are MOV files with AAC audio. In Safari on iOS, pick them through the Photos or Files picker; the phone runs the single-threaded engine and converts one file at a time.
Is the video uploaded?
No. The container is read and the audio extracted inside your browser tab. The application has no upload endpoint, so neither the video nor the audio leaves your device.