MOV to WAV for Podcasts

Podcasters hit this specific conversion because iPhone videos is where the MOV came from — a remote guest, a field recording, a clip — and MOV is Apple's QuickTime container, and the video track is almost the whole file when all you wanted was the sound. For a show you need WAV, so the MOV-to-WAV step is part of the edit, not an afterthought.

Edit in WAV, publish in something lossy. Keeping the working file lossless means your cuts, levelling, noise reduction, and EQ all happen on raw samples — and only the final episode export is lossy, applied once to the finished mix.

Podcast bitrates are lower than most people assume, deliberately. 128 kbps stereo is the widely used standard, and 64–96 kbps mono is entirely respectable for pure speech — it roughly halves the download for every listener, which adds up across a back catalogue and matters to anyone on limited mobile data. Reserve 192 kbps and above for shows where music genuinely carries the experience.

Mono is the decision most worth revisiting. If your episode is voices with no meaningful stereo image — which describes most interview and solo shows — mono at 96 kbps is perceptually equivalent to stereo at 192 and half the size. Publishing stereo by default is a habit, not a requirement. And archive the lossless edit: social clips, best-of segments, and fixes should always be cut from that, never from the published file.

Expect roughly 6× smaller: MOV runs about 60 MB per minute, WAV about 10. MOV is lossy, and the detail its encoder discarded is gone permanently — converting to WAV cannot restore it. What you gain is that nothing you do afterwards costs any further quality.

Most people meet MOV through iPhone videos. It is a fine format there; the trouble is that MOV is Apple's QuickTime container, and the video track is almost the whole file when all you wanted was the sound. WAV is the destination when you need uncompressed, edit-ready audio that every DAW and editor accepts. MOV costs you around 60 MB for every minute; WAV asks for about 10. Over a long recording that gap is the whole reason to convert. One honest note on this exact pair: MOV is already lossy, so moving to WAV cannot restore detail the MOV encoder discarded — it hands you an uncompressed container, not better audio, and the value is a loss-free chain from here on.