Convert MOV to ALAC — Free Online Converter

MOV files are Apple's QuickTime container, commonly holding H.264 or HEVC video with AAC or ALAC audio. ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is Apple's lossless compression format, open-sourced in 2011, that reduces PCM audio to roughly 50-60% of original size without any data loss. Every Apple device — iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, HomePod — natively decodes ALAC.

Extracting audio from MOV to ALAC produces a lossless, compressed audio file that saves storage space compared to uncompressed AIFF or WAV while maintaining bit-perfect reproduction. This is ideal for archiving audio from video recordings where you want the highest possible quality in the smallest lossless package.

ALAC files integrate seamlessly into Apple Music libraries and iTunes, supporting full metadata (artist, album, artwork) that AAC and MP3 also support but without any lossy compression.

FFmpeg demuxes the MOV container, decodes the audio track to PCM, and re-encodes using the ALAC encoder into an M4A container (MPEG-4 with .m4a extension). If the MOV already contains ALAC audio, the stream is copied directly without transcoding. ALAC supports 16-bit to 32-bit depth and sample rates up to 384 kHz, covering all standard and high-resolution audio formats. Compression is typically 50-60% of the original PCM size.