Convert TS to AAC Online
Extract audio from digital TV and DVB radio MPEG-TS recordings and convert to AAC for iPhone and Apple, free, in your browser.
.ts, .mts · up to 100 MB
What it's for
TS to AAC: digital TV and radio audio for iPhone and Apple
DVR and IPTV for iPhone
Convert MythTV, TVHeadend, Plex DVR, and Humax receiver recordings to AAC for iPhone.
MP2/AC-3/native AAC to AAC
Decodes MPEG-2 Audio, Dolby AC-3, and HE-AAC from DVB-T and DVB-T2 streams to AAC-LC.
Digital radio and TV podcast
Extract audio from DVB radio and television programmes to distribute as a podcast on Apple Podcasts.
100% private
DVR recordings processed in your browser with FFmpeg.wasm. They never leave your device.
How it works
Three steps, no hassle
Upload your TS file
Drag or select your .ts or .m2ts. DVR recordings, DVB-T/DVB-S/IPTV streams, tuner card captures. Up to 500 MB.
Extraction and AAC conversion
FFmpeg demultiplexes the MPEG-TS container, detects the stream's audio codec (MPEG-2 Audio, AC-3, native AAC, or E-AC-3), and converts to AAC-LC. If the stream is already native AAC, lossless stream copy is performed.
Download the AAC
Audio ready for iPhone, GarageBand, Logic Pro, Apple Podcasts, or for archiving the audio of a radio or TV programme.
FAQ
Got questions?
MPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-TS, standardized in ISO/IEC 13818-1 in 1994) was designed specifically for digital television transmission and recording on unreliable media (satellite broadcasts, coaxial cable, terrestrial antenna). Its 188-byte packet structure with error correction makes it ideal for direct DVB stream recording without decoding or recompression, preserving exactly the quality of the original broadcast. MythTV (the most popular open-source DVR software for Linux), TVHeadend (DVB server for NAS and Raspberry Pi), Plex DVR, Emby LiveTV, Windows Media Center (discontinued in Windows 10), and all hardware receivers with recording capability (Humax, Topfield, Zgemma, Vu+, GigaBlue) use TS as their native recording format. DVB-T USB tuner cards from Hauppauge, TechnoTrend, Geniatech, and AVerMedia also record in TS when used with software like VLC, Kaffeine, or Me-TV.
European digital television under the DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) standard uses primarily three audio codecs depending on the channel's compression technology: MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer II (MP2), the historical DVB-T codec since the launch of digital terrestrial TV in Europe (Sweden, 1998; Spain, 2000; Italy, 2003; Germany, 2003; France, 2005): almost all European DTT content prior to 2010 uses MP2 at 192–256 kbps stereo. AC-3 (Dolby Digital), mandatory for 5.1 surround audio in HD DVB-T2 channels (the second-generation standard launched in 2008 and adopted in Spain in 2010, Italy in 2012, Germany in 2019): HD channels use AC-3 5.1 for premium content. AAC-LC and HE-AAC, the modern codec for DVB-T2: some countries like Norway (which switched off analogue DTT in 2017) and Austria have already migrated their channels to HE-AAC on DVB-T2.
Yes, and it's one of the most popular applications of TS-to-AAC among digital radio enthusiasts. Most European countries with DVB-T coverage include some digital radio services in the digital multiplex (mux). In the UK, BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 Live are broadcast on the Freeview mux. In Spain, RNE Radio Nacional, Radio 3, Radio Exterior, Radio Clásica, and RTVE Radio are available on the DTT mux. Recording the TS stream containing these radio services with a DVB-T USB card and converting to AAC makes it possible to create high-quality on-demand podcasts from radio programmes. For distributing the audio as a podcast, it is recommended to normalise volume to -16 LUFS (the Apple Podcasts and Spotify standard) with a tool like Auphonic before publishing.
A typical European DVB-T multiplex contains between 6 and 12 TV and/or radio channels simultaneously. When recording the full mux (without per-channel demultiplexing), the TS file contains the video and audio streams of all channels in the mux. The file may be large (one hour of a full mux can occupy 5–15 GB depending on the mux). Convertir.ai extracts by default the first audio stream from the TS (the first programme's audio according to the PAT/PMT). To extract audio from a specific channel within the mux, the FFmpeg command-line workflow is: ffprobe -show_streams file.ts to list all streams and their PIDs; then ffmpeg -i file.ts -map 0:a:N -c:a aac -b:a 192k output.aac where N is the index of the desired audio stream.
MPEG-TS is a transmission format designed for digital television distribution, not for end-user device consumption. Apple does not include native TS support in iOS, iPadOS, macOS QuickTime Player, or iTunes because TS is not a consumer file format: it is a broadcast transport format. The consumer containers Apple natively supports are MP4, MOV, M4V, M4A, and ALAC. Although most hardware decoders like Apple TV and iPhone can decode the video and audio codecs present in TS files (H.264, HEVC, AAC, AC-3), the TS container itself is not recognised by the iOS application layer. The solution is to remux the TS content to MP4 (for video+audio) or extract the audio to AAC/M4A (audio only), which are container formats recognised by all Apple applications.
Yes, especially if the source is a debate, interview, or spoken-word programme from a high-quality TV channel. Channels like BBC News Channel, Al Jazeera English, France 24, DW (Deutsche Welle), or Euronews broadcast with AC-3 or AAC audio at 192–384 kbps bitrates, sufficient for professional podcast production. Extracting the audio from the TS to AAC and editing the result in Adobe Audition, Logic Pro, or GarageBand to remove musical headers, jingles, and non-spoken segments can produce a podcast of quality equivalent to any professional production. For radio programmes recorded from DAB/DVB (BBC Radio 4, France Inter, Deutschlandfunk, RNE Radio Nacional), the quality of the broadcast digital audio is directly comparable to a studio-produced podcast, as professional broadcasters record and transmit with high-quality studio equipment.
Convert TS to AAC: DVB TV and radio audio for iPhone and Apple
The MPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-TS) is the universal recording format of digital television. Defined in the ISO/IEC 13818-1 standard in 1994 and adopted by all digital television systems worldwide (DVB-T and DVB-T2 in Europe, ATSC in North America, ISDB-T in Japan and Latin America, DTMB in China), MPEG-TS is the format in which modern DVRs save all their recordings. When you record a TV programme with MythTV on Linux, with TVHeadend on a Raspberry Pi, with Windows Media Center on Windows 7, with Plex DVR or Emby LiveTV, or with a Humax or Topfield hardware receiver, the result is always a .ts file with the exact content of the broadcast stream, including audio in the original codec used by the channel (MPEG-2 Audio Layer II for standard-definition DTT channels, AC-3 for HD channels with surround audio, or AAC for the most modern channels that have already migrated to the next-generation television audio codec).
The incompatibility between TS and the Apple ecosystem is fundamental: iOS, iPadOS, macOS, QuickTime, iTunes, and Apple TV do not natively recognise the MPEG-TS container as a consumer file format. Although Apple hardware is perfectly capable of decoding all audio codecs present in TS files (Apple Silicon and A-series chips include hardware decoding of AAC, MP3, AC-3, and HEVC), the iOS and macOS software layer does not recognise .ts as a valid format. This means any recording of a radio or television programme in TS — the 9 o'clock news recorded with the DVR, a concert broadcast on a public channel, a BBC Radio 4 interview programme captured with a DVB-T card — is completely inaccessible in the Apple ecosystem without prior conversion. AAC, Apple's native audio codec since 2001, is the natural target format for audio from these recordings when the intended use is playback on iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
Convertir.ai performs TS-to-AAC conversion with full support for all audio codecs present in European and global DVB streams: MPEG-2 Audio Layer II (MP2, decoded by libavcodec's mp2 decoder, present in virtually all standard-definition European DTT), AC-3 and E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus, decoded by libavcodec's ac3 and eac3 decoders, with automatic 5.1-to-stereo downmix where applicable), AAC-LC and HE-AAC (the modern codec present in the newest HD channels, with automatic stream copy when the destination is also AAC). The process runs entirely in the browser with FFmpeg.wasm: a multi-gigabyte DVR recording is processed locally on the user's device without server upload, with full privacy for recorded television and radio content. The resulting AAC is directly importable into iTunes, GarageBand, Logic Pro, and any iOS application without additional steps.