Convert FLV to WAV Online
Extract audio from Flash FLV to lossless WAV, free, in your browser.
.flv · up to 100 MB
What it's for
FLV to WAV: legacy YouTube and Flash game audio for your DAW
Lossless sampling
Extract Flash game soundtracks and pre-2015 YouTube videos for sampling in FL Studio or Ableton.
MP3/AAC to PCM
Decode the MP3 or AAC stream from the FLV to PCM with no additional loss.
Lossless archival
PCM WAV as a permanent archival format for irreplaceable Flash-era audio content.
100% private
FLVs processed in your browser with FFmpeg.wasm. Never uploaded to any server.
How it works
Three steps, no hassle
Upload your FLV file
Drag or select your .flv. Pre-2015 YouTube videos, Flash games, legacy screen recordings. Up to 200 MB.
Audio stream decoding
FFmpeg decodes the MP3, AAC, or PCM audio from the FLV and outputs an uncompressed WAV. No server uploads.
Download the WAV
Audio ready for DAW import, transcription software, sampling, or lossless archival.
FAQ
Got questions?
The FLV container (Flash Video, specification published by Adobe in 2008) supports three main audio codecs: MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3, the most common option in pre-2012 YouTube videos), AAC (Advanced Audio Coding, in AAC-LC, HE-AAC, and HE-AACv2 variants, preferred from 2010 onwards for better efficiency), and raw PCM (uncompressed audio, rare but possible). When converting to WAV, FFmpeg decodes any of these codecs to PCM without loss: MP3 is decoded to the PCM samples it represents, and AAC is fully decoded to the original PCM audio before AAC encoding. The resulting WAV is the PCM equivalent of the FLV's audio.
YouTube used FLV as its primary delivery format from its 2005 launch until roughly 2015, when it fully migrated to MP4/H.264. Millions of historical videos were downloaded between 2005 and 2015 as FLV using tools like youtube-dl, DownThemAll, or browser extensions. Many content creators, archivists, and musicians have FLV collections with content no longer available on YouTube or with audio they want to use: soundtracks from rare music videos, live performances downloaded before they were removed, streaming radio interviews captured, or sound effect samplers from Flash games. Extracting audio as PCM WAV is the first step to importing it into a DAW for sampling, editing, or lossless archival.
The quality of the resulting WAV depends on the audio codec of the original FLV. If the FLV contains MP3: MP3 is a lossy codec, so the resulting WAV is the faithful decoding of the compressed MP3 — no additional loss in conversion, but quality was already limited by the original MP3 compression (typically 128 kbps on pre-2012 YouTube videos). If the FLV contains AAC: similarly, AAC is lossy and the WAV is the exact decoding of the AAC without further degradation. If the FLV contains PCM: the WAV is a bit-perfect copy of the original audio. In no case does FLV→WAV conversion introduce additional loss — WAV quality is limited solely by the FLV's original codec.
Yes, and it's one of the most interesting use cases. Flash games from the 2000s and early 2010s (Newgrounds, Armor Games, Kongregate) had original soundtracks and unique sound effects created by independent composers. Many of these games are no longer accessible since Flash Player's death (Adobe officially ended support on December 31, 2020). FLVs of walkthroughs and gameplay recordings of these games preserve the audio. Extracting audio as PCM WAV allows importing it into FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic Pro, or any sampler and using the sonic elements as sample material. PCM WAV at the original sample rate (generally 44.1 kHz) is directly compatible with any hardware or software sampler.
Yes. FLV files downloaded with yt-dlp (the active successor to youtube-dl since 2021), youtube-dl, or any video downloader are standard FLV files using Adobe's Flash Video container. FFmpeg.wasm can process any valid FLV regardless of the tool used to download it. Note: yt-dlp currently defaults to MP4 or WebM, since YouTube stopped serving FLV. To download in FLV format if the original was FLV, you need to specify formats using --format in yt-dlp.
Convertir.ai converts the entire FLV to WAV. To extract only a specific audio segment, the recommended workflow is: first convert the entire FLV to WAV with Convertir.ai, then open the WAV in Audacity (free) and use the time selection tool to select and export only the desired segment. Audacity lets you export selections to WAV, FLAC, MP3, or other formats directly. Alternatively, FFmpeg on the command line accepts -ss (start time) and -t (duration) parameters to directly extract a segment of the FLV audio.
Convert FLV to WAV: pre-2015 YouTube and Flash games audio to lossless
The FLV (Flash Video) format was developed by Macromedia (acquired by Adobe in 2005), with Adobe publishing the public FLV container specification in 2008. YouTube adopted FLV as its primary streaming format at launch in 2005, using the Flash player embedded in browsers that was universal at the time. From 2005 until roughly 2013–2015, all YouTube videos were served as FLV or the variant F4V (based on the MP4 container but with Adobe licensing). Audio in these FLVs was predominantly encoded as MP3 at 128 kbps for lower-quality videos and AAC-LC at 128 kbps for higher-quality ones. Millions of people downloaded YouTube videos as FLV during that decade using tools like RealDownloader, GetFLV, DownloadHelper for Firefox, or youtube-dl (created by Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez in 2006). Many of those videos are no longer available on YouTube — taken down for copyright infringement, withdrawn by their creators, or deleted for community guideline violations — making the downloaded FLVs the only existing archive of the content.
Extracting audio from FLV to WAV has two major use cases: music sampling and archive preservation. For sampling, electronic music, hip-hop, and lo-fi producers have a long tradition of sampling audio from YouTube videos. FLVs of rare live performances, exclusive acoustic versions, interviews with unique musical moments, and especially Flash game soundtracks from Newgrounds (which included original compositions from artists like Waterflame, ParagonX9, or F-777) are valued sampling sources. Converting FLV to PCM WAV allows importing the audio directly into any DAW without additional conversion: FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic Pro X, Pro Tools, and Reaper all read WAV natively. For archival preservation, digital archiving organizations (Internet Archive, Prelinger Archives) and individual archivists documenting 2000s digital culture need audio in lossless WAV format for permanent storage, since PCM WAV introduces no degradation from recompression when processed or redistributed.
Convertir.ai runs the FLV-to-WAV audio extraction entirely in the browser with FFmpeg.wasm. The technical process involves: parsing the FLV container according to the Adobe Flash Video File Format Specification v10.1 (published 2010), which defines the format of FLV tags (type, timestamp, stream ID, data); identifying the audio codec via the SoundFormat field of the Audio Tag Header (values: 2=MP3, 10=AAC, 0=linear PCM, 14=MP3 at 8kHz); decoding the audio stream using the corresponding decoder in libavcodec (libmp3lame for MP3, libfdk_aac or the native AAC decoder for AAC); converting to signed 16-bit PCM at the original stream sample rate (generally 44.1 kHz); wrapping in the RIFF WAVE container. For FLV with AAC audio, libavcodec's decoder decodes the AAC-LC bitstream including correct handling of the AudioSpecificConfig (the 2 configuration bytes at the start of each ADTS frame in FLV). The result is a PCM WAV faithfully representing the decoded audio from the original FLV.