Formats
The audio and video files pktito reads on macOS, Windows and Linux, and with ffmpeg.
How pktito reads a file
pktito reads files with the system’s own media library: AVFoundation on macOS, Media Foundation on Windows. Linux uses ffmpeg, which the .deb installs. On macOS and Windows, ffmpeg (when it’s installed) reads what the system can’t.
The formats
Tested on macOS 27, Windows 11 and Ubuntu 26.04, October 2026.
| File | macOS | Windows | ffmpeg |
|---|---|---|---|
| MP4, MOV, M4A, 3GP: AAC, HE-AAC v1 and v2, ALAC, PCM; H.264, HEVC, ProRes | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| MP3, constant and variable rate | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| WAV: 16 and 24-bit, float, µ-law, IMA ADPCM | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| FLAC, 16-bit 44.1 kHz and 24-bit 96 kHz | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| MPEG-TS (H.264, AAC), MPEG-PS (MPEG-2, MP2) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AVI: MJPEG with PCM | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AC-3 5.1, alone or in M2TS | ✓ | – | ✓ |
| AIFF; CAF with ALAC | ✓ | – | ✓ |
| Ogg Opus and Vorbis, .opus voice messages | ✓ | – | ✓ |
| WebM: Opus or Vorbis, with VP8, VP9 or AV1 | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Matroska with AAC | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Matroska with AC-3, E-AC-3 or DTS 5.1 | – | – | ✓ |
| WMA, WMV | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| AVI: MPEG-4 with MP3 | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| FLV; Ogg Theora | – | – | ✓ |
A file with several audio tracks gives its first.
The same transcript everywhere
A lossless file (WAV, FLAC, ALAC) gives the same transcript on every system. A lossy one can differ by a word or two, since each system decodes it slightly differently.
Choosing the reader
PKTITO_DECODER overrides the choice, for the app and pktito-cli:
PKTITO_DECODER=ffmpegreads everything through ffmpeg.PKTITO_DECODER=osuses the system alone, never ffmpeg.