Convert 3GP to AAC — Free Online Converter

3GP files use the 3GPP container developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, typically storing H.263 or MPEG-4 Part 2 video alongside AMR or AAC audio at resolutions ranging from 176x144 (QCIF) up to 720x480. Converting to AAC extracts and re-encodes the audio track into Advanced Audio Coding format, the lossy codec standardized in MPEG-4 Part 3 that delivers transparent quality at 128-256 kbps. Because many 3GP recordings already contain AAC audio internally, this conversion can often be a simple stream copy rather than a full re-encode.

3GP audio is frequently trapped in a container that modern music players, podcast apps, and web browsers refuse to recognize. AAC is natively supported on every iPhone, iPad, Android phone, and desktop browser released in the last decade. Extracting to AAC also strips the video track, dramatically reducing file size — a 10 MB 3GP clip with AMR audio at 12.2 kbps might yield a 300 KB AAC file at 128 kbps with far better fidelity. If you have voice recordings, conference calls, or music captured on an older GSM phone, AAC ensures they remain playable everywhere without installing specialty codecs.

FFmpeg demuxes the 3GP container, identifies the audio stream (AMR-NB at 8 kHz, AMR-WB at 16 kHz, or AAC), and either copies the stream directly into an ADTS/M4A wrapper when the source is already AAC, or transcodes AMR to AAC-LC using the native encoder at the specified bitrate. Sample rate is up-converted from 8 kHz to 44.1 kHz when transcoding from AMR-NB to ensure compatibility with standard audio players. Channel layout is preserved — most 3GP audio is mono.