Convert MPEG to M4A — Free Online Converter

M4A is an audio-only MP4 container typically holding AAC or ALAC audio, widely recognized by Apple devices and iTunes as the standard music and podcast format. MPEG video files contain audio tracks encoded as MPEG Audio Layer 2 (MP2) that, when extracted to M4A, become fully integrated with Apple's media ecosystem including iTunes library management, Siri voice commands, and Apple Music metadata.

M4A offers two advantages over extracting to raw AAC or MP3. First, the MP4 container provides rich metadata support — chapters, artwork, lyrics, and iTunes-specific tags that MP3's ID3 system handles poorly. Second, M4A files integrate seamlessly with Apple's ecosystem, appearing with proper artwork and metadata in iTunes, Music app, and Podcasts app without additional configuration.

For audio content extracted from MPEG recordings — lectures, interviews, broadcast audio, concert performances — M4A provides a professional, well-organized format that works perfectly on both Apple and Android devices. The container overhead is negligible (a few hundred bytes), so file sizes are essentially the same as raw AAC.

FFmpeg strips the video stream and encodes audio to AAC inside an M4A container (MPEG-4 Part 14 audio profile). Command: `-vn -acodec aac -b:a 256k -ar 44100 -ac 2 -movflags +faststart -f mp4`. For lossless M4A (ALAC): `-vn -acodec alac`. Chapter markers can be added via an FFmpeg metadata file for podcast-style content.