Video to WAV Converter
Export the audio from a video as an uncompressed WAV — the format editors, mastering tools and transcription models ask for. Pick a sample rate and channel count to match what is receiving the file.
How big a WAV gets
WAV size is fully determined before you press anything: sample rate × channels × 2 bytes × seconds. Nothing about the audio itself changes it — silence and a full orchestra occupy exactly the same space.
| Shape | Per minute | Per hour | Choose it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 48 kHz stereo | 11.0 MB | 659.2 MB | Video's native rate. Match it and no resampling happens at all. |
| 44.1 kHz stereo | 10.1 MB | 605.6 MB | CD rate, and what most music software still expects by default. |
| 48 kHz mono | 5.5 MB | 329.6 MB | Interviews and voiceover — half the size, and a mono source gains nothing from two identical channels. |
| 16 kHz mono | 1.8 MB | 109.9 MB | What speech recognition models actually consume. Whisper and most transcription APIs resample to this anyway. |
For comparison, the same hour as a 192 kbps MP3 is about 8 times smaller. Choose WAV when something downstream requires it, not by default.
What WAV does and does not give you
Converting to WAV stops further loss; it does not undo loss that already happened. The audio inside a video has been through a lossy codec already, and decoding it to PCM preserves that result exactly — detail the encoder discarded is gone for good.
That is still worth doing whenever the audio faces more processing. Editing, noise reduction, time-stretching and mastering all degrade a compressed source further each time it is re-encoded; working in PCM means the only generation of loss is the one the video arrived with.
If you only need to listen to it, or send it to someone, MP3 or a lossless copy of the original track from the audio extractor will be a far smaller file with no audible difference.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my WAV file so much bigger than the video?
Because WAV is not compressed at all. It stores every sample as a raw number, so the size depends only on sample rate, channel count and length — never on the content. A 48 kHz stereo WAV is about 8 times the size of the same audio as a 192 kbps MP3, and a video's audio track was compressed roughly ten to one to begin with.
Which sample rate should I choose?
48 kHz if the audio came from video, because that is what video uses and matching it means no resampling happens at all. 44.1 kHz if the destination is music software that expects CD rate. 16 kHz mono if you are feeding a speech recognition model, which will resample to that anyway.
Is WAV better quality than the original?
No. Converting to WAV cannot recover anything the video's compression already discarded — it just stops any further loss from happening. A WAV made from an AAC track is a lossless copy of a lossy source, which is exactly what editing and transcription tools want, but it is not an improvement.
Can I use this to prepare audio for transcription?
Yes, and 16 kHz mono is the shape most speech models actually consume. Choosing it here rather than letting the tool resample later gives you a much smaller file with no loss that matters for speech, since a mono downmix at 16 kHz keeps everything in the vocal range.
What are the limits?
Source files up to 200.0 MB. Bear in mind the output can be larger than the input — an hour of 48 kHz stereo is about 659.2 MB — so long videos are better handled on a desktop browser than a phone.