HEVC to AIFC Converter

HEVC to AIFC Converter

AIFC — normally written AIFF-C — is the compressed-capable revision of Apple's Audio Interchange File Format, and it is a format people usually arrive at because a specific tool asked for it by name rather than because they went looking. This page extracts the audio track from an HEVC file and writes it into that container. It is worth reading the spec notes below before converting, because "AIFC" describes a chunk layout rather than a single sample format, and the choice you make in the Audio Codec dropdown decides which form type actually ends up in the file header.

AIFF-C at a Glance

What the Audio Codec Dropdown Writes Into the File

This is the part worth knowing before you convert. The Audio Codec group offers four sample formats, and they do not all produce an AIFF-C form type. We converted the same source four times, once per option, and read back the first bytes of each file:

So the default produces a file named .aifc whose internal form type is plain AIFF. In practice this is harmless — every AIFF-C reader accepts a plain AIFF file, since AIFF-C was defined as a superset — but if you are feeding a strict validator or a tool that inspects the form type before the extension, choose one of the other three options and you will get a genuine AIFC header with the FVER chunk in place.

A-law and mu-law are the ITU-T G.711 telephony codings: 8-bit companded audio built for voice circuits. They halve the file size and sound like it on music, but they are the canonical AIFF-C compression types and are exactly what some legacy Mac and Unix audio pipelines expect from an .aifc.

How to Convert HEVC to AIFC

1. Upload Your HEVC File: Drag and drop the .hevc onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse for it. Several files can be queued and will share one set of settings.
2. Pick an Audio Codec: Keep PCM 16-bit Big Endian for a plain uncompressed export, or choose PCM A-law / PCM mu-law for a true AIFF-C form at half the size, or PCM 16-bit Little Endian for uncompressed samples with a sowt tag.
3. Set Audio Channel, Audio Sample Rate, and Trim: Audio Channel offers Original, Mono, and Stereo; Audio Sample Rate offers Original or a fixed rate up to 48000 Hz. Both change the file size directly because the samples are stored raw. Leave Trim on Unchanged for the whole timeline, or switch it to set a Start time and Duration.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .aifc. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public.

Before You Convert: Does Your .hevc Contain Audio at All?

HEVC — High Efficiency Video Coding, published as ITU-T Recommendation H.265 in April 2013 and as ISO/IEC 23008-2 — is a video codec, so a real H.265 elementary stream holds compressed picture and nothing else. Upload one of those to an audio-only target and the job fails, because there is no audio stream for the encoder to write. Not every file named .hevc is an elementary stream, though: converters that target HEVC commonly write a Matroska container under that extension, and manually renamed .mp4 files turn up constantly. Media tools identify a file by its contents rather than its name, so a container named .hevc extracts perfectly well here. Play the file in VLC before uploading — audible sound means it will convert; a silent picture means you want the original container instead, via MP4 to AIFC, MKV to AIFC, or MOV to AIFC.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between AIFF and AIFF-C?

AIFF, published by Apple in 1988, stores big-endian linear PCM and nothing else. AIFF-C, published in 1991, keeps the identical chunk structure but adds two things: a mandatory FVER chunk and a four-character compression-type field in the COMM chunk, which lets the same file layout carry other sample formats. AIFF-C is a superset, so an AIFF-C reader opens plain AIFF files too, while an AIFF-only reader may reject an AIFF-C file it does not recognise.

Is .aifc uncompressed?

It depends entirely on the compression tag inside, which is the whole point of the format. On this page, the default PCM 16-bit Big Endian and the PCM 16-bit Little Endian option are both uncompressed. A-law and mu-law are compressed — 8 bits per sample instead of 16, using the companding curves defined in ITU-T G.711 — which halves the size at an audible cost. There is no bitrate control on this page because none of these formats has one.

Why does my .aifc file report itself as AIFF?

Because the default sample format is plain uncompressed big-endian PCM, which the encoder writes using the classic FORM…AIFF header rather than the AIFC one. The file is valid and every AIFF-C-capable reader opens it. If you specifically need the AIFC form type — for a strict validator, or a tool that checks the header before the extension — pick PCM A-law, PCM mu-law, or PCM 16-bit Little Endian, each of which writes a genuine AIFC form with the FVER chunk.

Why did my conversion fail with no output file?

Almost certainly because the upload is a video-only H.265 elementary stream, which contains no audio track. An audio-only target needs an audio stream to encode, so the job errors out rather than producing a silent file. Confirm by playing the file: sound means it will convert, silence means the audio is still inside whatever container the stream was demuxed from.

How large will the output be?

Multiply the sample rate by the bytes per sample by the channel count. The default 16-bit stereo at 44.1 kHz is 176,400 bytes per second — roughly 10.6 MB per minute, or about 635 MB per hour. Mono halves it, and so does choosing A-law or mu-law, which store 8 bits per sample. If size is the problem, HEVC to FLAC compresses losslessly to around half of PCM, and HEVC to MP3 is far smaller again.

Should I use AIFC or plain AIFF for a DAW?

Plain AIFF, in nearly every case. Logic Pro, Pro Tools, GarageBand and the rest all read AIFF natively, and it avoids any question about whether a given compression tag is supported. HEVC to AIFF and HEVC to AIF both produce that file with the more familiar extension. Reach for .aifc when something specifically asked you for it.

Does the AIFC keep any of the metadata from the video?

Very little. The AIFF family stores text in optional NAME, AUTH, ANNO and (c) chunks that many applications neither write nor read, and video containers organise their metadata quite differently. If tags matter to you, extract to FLAC or MP3 instead — both carry structured metadata that players actually display.

Will the audio quality be better than the source?

No, and no format can manage that. The audio track inside a video container is normally already lossy — AAC most often — and this conversion decodes that track and stores the resulting samples verbatim. The benefit of an uncompressed target is that nothing further is discarded, which matters when the file is going to be edited and re-exported. It cannot restore detail the original encoder removed.

What happens to my file after the conversion?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. Nothing is shared or made public, there is no account to create, and no watermark is added. For long or high-bitrate sources the practical constraint is upload time over your own connection rather than anything at the conversion end.