Export Formats supported by Audacity

Gale 18Dec14: ToDo-2 I added an Intro (it's too bald otherwise if someone just finds this without coming from an Export page). I expanded the list of formats mentioned in "Other uncompressed files" and only provided a link for items that have options. I added information about command-line export and suggested we should mention Speex, Opus and ALAC here.

• Peter 19Dec14: Oops, I kept forgetting to do that, I think the ednote was blinding it me to its absence - so thanks for spotting that and adding the intro Gale. I may be short of time today but I will review your other changes and comments in detail later.

Peter 11Dec14: The information contained in the bottom half of the Export Audio page on the various file formats and the table for comparison of file sizes would be equally useful in the Export Multiple page. There all we say is "Export format: Choose one of the available export formats from this menu".

1. Rather than duplicate this material there (and we do always try to avoid duplication) I propose to spin that section off to a separate page.
2. This would also be useful in the Forum situation I encountered yet again yesterday where the user was enquiring about formats and I found myself directing him/her to an inadequate page in the Wiki.
3. It would also have the benefit of shortening this page for the reader who already knows what format they wish to export to.

• Gale 11Dec14: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/FileFormats is really only a landing page but at least the WAV, MP3 and OGG Wiki pages it links to have some useful content not necessarily neatly pulled together elsewhere. http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/OGG looks too detailed to be in the Manual. As it is now we link from Manual to the Glossary for descriptions of formats.

  I don't object to a page in the Manual about Audacity-supported formats, but it creates a need for another click through versus leaving the information here. Perhaps you would like to make a draft page so we can see what it would contain? Note that the table below excludes formats mentioned in How can I export to formats not listed in the Export Audio Dialog? and excludes many of the "Other uncompressed" formats. How much detail do you want about all FFmpeg and other uncompressed formats? And what will you do about the WAV/AIFF/OGG and MP3 pages on Wiki?

• Peter 12Dec14: My main concern is occasioned by the fact that Export Multiple has absolutely no information on choice of format, apart from the fact that you can choose. Sure I could link from there to an anchor section on this page - but that then occasions a click from that page anyway so it may as well go to the new proposed page.

  My feeling is that I would probably leave the WAV/AIFF/OGG and MP3 pages on the Wiki as there we can provide more detail if required, plus there may well be links to them - which probably means I'd also retain the Wiki parent page that links to them and probably upgrade it.

  Note too that Tutorial - Exporting to iTunes also has some material on choosing formats. Here it is limited, by design, to the smaller set of formats one is sensibly likely to use for iTunes/iPod usage. But is does have some material on why you'd choose compressed or uncompressed that may be valuable to include on the proposed now formats page.

This page describes audio file formats which can be exported to using the Export Audio / Export Selected Audio and Export Multiple dialogs.

To export to MP3 you must install the optional LAME encoder and to export to formats listed as "FFmpeg" you must install the optional FFmpeg library.

Many format types have size, quality or encoding options. Select the format type then click the Options... button in the Export Audio / Selected Audio or Export Multiple dialog to view the options for that selected format. You can click the first link in each format listed below to view the Options page for that format.

Uncompressed format types

Gale 18Dec14: ToDo-2 The below statement is questionable given "Other uncompressed files" includes 4-bit and 8-bit formats and even GSM. It may not be worth trying to explain the sense in which those smaller formats are lossless, but the Glossary link to uncompressed explains it in essence.

The following are all uncompressed, lossless formats that do not lose any information from the audio:

• Other uncompressed files: includes all the uncompressed audio formats that Audacity can export, including 4-bit ADPCM, 8-bit U-Law/A-Law, 24-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit options. This menu item defaults to WAV (Microsoft) signed 16-bit PCM on Windows and Linux and to AIFF (Apple/SGI) signed 16 bit PCM on Mac.
• AIFF (Apple/SGI) signed 16 bit PCM No options for this format: AIFF is a lossless format that can both be played on Mac and Windows computers, though it is far more likely to be selected by Mac users. AIFF 16-bit PCM is suitable whenever you want to burn your exported file to an audio CD.
• WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM No options for this format: WAV is a lossless format that can both be played on Windows or Mac computers. WAV 16-bit PCM is eminently suitable whenever you want to burn your exported file to an audio CD.

16-bit WAV and AIFF formats produce large files and are best suited for use on computers.

Compressed format types

Compressed formats produce files that are usually significantly smaller than uncompressed formats, as seen in the table below. Thus they are well suited for use on portable devices where storage space is smaller and at a premium.

• GSM 6.10 WAV (mobile) No options for this format: Produces a mono WAV file encoded with the compressed, lossy GSM 6.10 codec as used in mobile telephones.
• MP3 Files: MP3 is a popular compressed, lossy format producing much smaller files than WAV or AIFF, at the expense of some loss of quality.
  You must download the optional LAME encoder to export to MP3.
• OGG Vorbis Files: Ogg Vorbis is the compressed, lossy Vorbis codec in an OGG container. Vorbis offers higher quality than MP3 for the same file size, and is useful for good quality small-sized mono files, but fewer applications can play the OGG format.
• FLAC Files: FLAC is a compressed but lossless format, giving larger file sizes than MP3 and OGG.
• MP2 Files: MP2 is a compressed, lossy format similar to MP3, producing slightly larger files than MP3 for the same quality.

External program

• (external program): sends audio via the command-line to any executable binary application either for processing or for encoding as a file. This is a method to export using an alternative compressed or uncompressed encoder or to a format not otherwise supported by Audacity.

FFmpeg format types (mostly compressed)

The following export types are listed in released builds of Audacity on Windows and Mac, and in other builds where FFmpeg is enabled. They will only function if you install the optional FFmpeg library.

The following four formats are small-sized compressed formats giving file sizes comparable to or smaller than MP3.

• M4A (AAC) Files (FFmpeg): Advanced Audio Coding is a compressed, lossy format used in Apple applications, generally achieving slightly better quality than MP3 for the same file size. By default, the exported file will be given an "m4a" extension. Optional permitted extensions: .mp4, .m4r (ringtone) and .3gp (mobile).
• AC3 Files (FFmpeg): the common name used for the compressed, lossy format used in Dolby Digital.
• AMR (narrow band) Files (FFmpeg): the Adaptive Multi-Rate codec is a patented compression scheme optimized for speech, but also used for mobile telephone ringtones. The wide band variant uses higher bandwidth for higher quality.
• WMA (version 2) Files (FFmpeg): Windows Media Audio v2 is a compressed, lossy format developed by Microsoft. Optional permitted extensions: .asf or .wmv.

Custom FFmpeg Export

• Custom FFmpeg Export: Allows interface-based export of some additional compressed or uncompressed formats not listed above, and options for exporting formats containing alternative codecs (for example, WAV format containing MP3 or OGG format containing FLAC). Note: not all formats and codecs are compatible, and some exports might result in zero-byte or invalid files if FFmpeg does not support the combination chosen.

  The most flexible method to export to more formats using FFmpeg (or using any alternative encoder of your choice) is therefore to select (external program) as above and use the command-line encoder. See How can I export to formats not listed in the Export Audio Dialog? for more information.

Gale 18Dec14: We give an example below (AMR WB) of a format not listed by name in the dropdown. I think there are at least three others that should be mentioned: Opus (requires command-line because Custom FFmpeg Export does not work for it), Speex (works in both Custom FFmpeg Export and command-line) and ALAC (though that is already mentioned at Tutorial_-_Exporting_to_iTunes#alac). So should we give the two extra examples I suggest below, and also ALAC (or perhaps link to ALAC on the iTunes page)?

AMR (wide band) export using 3GP extension (mono, 16000 Hz sample rate) may be made by choosing Custom FFmpeg Export (see below) if you obtain or compile a "shared" build of FFmpeg 1.2 or later that supports such encoding. The recommended FFmpeg library for Windows or Mac is suitable. Alternatively you can export AMR Wide Band using Audacity's command-line encoder pointing to a suitably built "ffmpeg" executable.

Peter 17Dec14 ToDo-2 Do we need a section here on all the "Other uncompressed files" that we support. Maybe it would be better to put that on a subpage. I'm thinking a subpage linked to from the "Compressed formats" section above.

• Gale 18Dec14: I don't think so. It already has its options page and I expanded the information above about what it contains.

File size and channel comparisons by export format

The following table gives typical achieved mono and stereo file sizes with different formats at default Audacity settings (that is, 44100 Hz sample rate and default bit rate or quality settings in the case of compressed formats). Where VBR compression is employed, the achieved size will vary depending on the content.

Some formats can be exported as multi-channel files containing more than two channels, if you enable this at "Use custom mix" in the Import / Export Preferences. The final column in the table shows the maximum number of channels Audacity can export for each format. Some formats may theoretically support more channels than Audacity can export.

Peter 17Dec14: I reordered the table by size descending order. I updated the Channels information after discussions with Steve and looking at the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_coding_formats .

• Gale: 17Dec14: The table contained information on the number of export channels supported *by Audacity* so is now incorrect. I don't think we'll be be expanding "Use custom mix" for 2.1.0 to support 255 OGG channels rather than 32. If you want to add theoretical maxima for the formats (-1 from me) then you will need another column. We could link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_coding_formats in the text though.
• Peter 18Dec14: I think Steve and I were both fooled by the fact that the text didn't make it clear that the upper channels limit is one imposed by Audacity and not the theoretical limit of the formats. I have reverted to the former values in the table and tried to clarify the text. I don't think I want to include a link to that Wikipedia page as I don't want to excite readers getting them thinking about numbers of channels that Audacity doesn't support.

ToDo-2 I plan to do some export experiments later to check the size comparisons as it is fairly clear that this table has not ben updated or verified for a fair while.

• Gale: 17Dec14: I very much doubt it was wrong before you changed it. The table was updated by me for 2.0.6.

N.B. the blank lines, seen only when editing, are deliberately left in to facilitate readability and any re-ordering that may be necessary, they do not affect the display of the table.</p>

Format	Lossy	Compression	File size (MB per minute):		File size limit:	Channels
			mono	stereo
WAV 16-bit PCM	No	None	5.0	10.0	4 GB(1)	32
AIFF 16-bit PCM	No	None	5.0	10.0	4 GB(1)	32
FLAC 16-bit	No	VBR	2.5	5.0		8
WMA v2	Yes	CBR	1.3	1.3		2
M4A (AAC)	Yes	VBR	-	1.1		32
AC3	Yes	CBR	1.1	1.1		7
MP2	Yes	CBR	1.1	1.1		2
MP3	Yes	CBR (optional VBR)	1.0 (CBR)	1.0 (CBR)		2
Ogg Vorbis	Yes	VBR	0.5	1.0		32
GSM 6.10 WAV	Yes	CBR	0.5	-		1
AMR (NB)	Yes	CBR	0.1	-		1

(1)	The practical file size limit is 2 GB in many player applications due to their interpretation of the file size header. This also applies to 24-bit and 32-bit files where those bit depths are valid.