Extract AC3 Dolby Digital with FFMpeg

If you have a source video file encoded with an AC3 Dolby Digital audio stream, you can extract the audio in it’s native format using FFMpeg.

The following example shows how to identify the available audio streams of the file video.avi. Just use ffmpeg without any output options, and you can see there are two streams (0.0 and 0.1), the second is AC3 audio.

ffmpeg -i video.avi

Input #0, avi, from 'video.avi':

Duration: 01:17:57.64, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1587 kb/s

Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 672x576 (snipped for brevity)

Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 448 kb/s

At least one output file must be specified

The following command will extract the AC3 audio stream to a file called audio.ac3.

ffmpeg -i video.avi -acodec copy audio.ac3

Input #0, avi, from 'video.avi':

Duration: 01:17:57.64, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1587 kb/s

Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 672x576 (snipped for brevity)

Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 448 kb/s

Output #0, ac3, to 'audio.ac3':

Stream #0.0: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 448 kb/s

Stream mapping:

Stream #0.1 -> #0.0

Press [q] to stop encoding

size= 255799kB time=4677.51 bitrate= 448.0kbits/s

video:0kB audio:255799kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000000%

Verify the file was created. The output below shows that this stream is about 250Mb.

ls -lh audio.ac3 

-rw-r--r-- 1 username gmendoza 250M 2010-02-21 09:47 audio.ac3

You can now use ffmpeg again to show that audio.ac3 only contains the ac3 audio stream.

ffmpeg -i audio.ac3

Input #0, ac3, from 'audio.ac3':

Duration: 01:17:57.46, bitrate: 448 kb/s

Stream #0.0: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 448 kb/s

At least one output file must be specified

Now that you have extracted the audio stream, you can do anything you wish with it. Enjoy.