Waveform Picture From Audio
Render a track as a single waveform image — for a thumbnail, a podcast cover, or just to see where the loud parts are.
Drop an audio or video file here, or click to browse
MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC · MP4, MOV, WebM — a video is drawn from its audio track
How to Use — Waveform Picture From Audio
Drop in an audio or video file
MP3, WAV, M4A and FLAC, or an MP4, MOV or WebM — a video is drawn from its audio track and its picture is ignored. Nothing is uploaded; FFmpeg runs inside the tab.
Pick the size, the colour and the scale
1200 × 240 for a banner, 1600 × 400 for more room, 800 × 800 for cover art. Any colour, and square-root or logarithmic scaling if the recording is quiet and linear draws a thin line.
Draw the waveform and download the PNG
The whole file is decoded once and rendered as a single PNG with a transparent background — a few kilobytes, so it drops onto any colour of page or cover.
Popular task presets
Best for / not for
Best for
- A still waveform for a podcast episode page, a cover, a release post or a press kit — one flat PNG on transparency that drops onto any background colour.
- Seeing the shape of a recording at a glance: where the loud passages are, where the silence is, whether one stereo channel is dead.
- Long files. The cost is one decode, so an hour-long podcast draws about as cheaply as anything else this site does to an hour of audio.
Not for
- A waveform that moves with the playhead. showwavespic renders one still frame of the whole file; the Audio Visualizer records an animation instead.
- Detail on a long file. The image spans the entire recording, so at 1200 pixels wide a 10-minute track gives each column half a second — longer than any word or drum hit.
- Picturing part of a file. There is no range selection: cut the section out first and draw that.
- A waveform on a solid background. The PNG has an alpha channel and no background at all, so a white waveform is invisible on a white page.
When to draw a waveform image
- Podcast and music release pages, where a waveform strip under the player says "this is audio" faster than any icon does.
- Cover art and social posts: the 800 × 800 preset is the square the platforms want, drawn in the colour of the artwork.
- Checking a recording before editing — a channel that draws flat is a channel that recorded nothing, and a track that draws as a thin line was recorded too quietly.
- Documentation and slides that need a picture of a specific take rather than a stock waveform.
Supported formats & limits
| Input containers | MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, OGG and Opus, plus MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV and AVI read for their audio track only. A file with no audio track is rejected with a message — the filter has no stream to attach to. |
|---|---|
| Input codecs | The audio is what has to decode: AAC, MP3, Opus, Vorbis, FLAC or PCM. Only the audio stream is mapped into the filter, so the picture of a video file is never decoded and the video codec costs nothing here — unlike everywhere else on this site, where AV1 is out because this build has no software AV1 decoder. |
| Output | One PNG (rgba). No video file and no audio: the result is a still image, and the audio itself is left untouched. |
| Output size | 1200 × 240 (5:1 banner), 1600 × 400 (4:1, a third more columns) or 800 × 800 (square). Flat colour on transparency compresses hard: 5489 bytes for a 1200 × 240 banner of a 10-second MP3, and 2–15 KB across the presets and lengths. |
| Background | None. showwavespic draws onto transparency and the alpha channel is kept, so the picture sits on any colour — and a white waveform is invisible on a white page. On a stereo file drawn unsplit, the two channels overlay, so single-channel areas come out half-transparent. |
| Detail | Bounded by the output width: seconds per column = duration ÷ width. A 10-minute file across 1200 pixels is half a second per column, a 60-minute podcast three seconds — past that, single sounds cannot get a peak of their own and the picture becomes the shape of the loudness. |
| Range | The whole file, always. There is no in/out point — cut the section out with the Audio Cutter first to draw only part of a recording. |
| Amplitude scale | Linear, square root or logarithmic — showwavespic’s own curve, applied to the drawing only. Nothing is done to the audio. |
| Speed | One decode of the file, not of the image, so it scales with length rather than with the size chosen: 10 seconds of MP3 drew in 42 ms in this build, and a 10-minute MP3 takes about a second. The single frame is emitted at EOF, so the progress bar sits at 0 until it is done. |
| Max file size | Up to ~2 GB (limited by browser memory) |
| Cost | Free for any use. No signup. No watermark. |
Waveform Image vs. the usual alternatives
| Feature | This tool | VEED (free) | Kapwing (free) | CapCut Online |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processing model | Runs locally in your browser | Upload-based project editor | Upload-based project editor | Upload-based online editor |
| File limits | No upload cap; practical limit is browser memory | Plan-specific upload limits | Plan-specific upload and export limits | Feature- and account-specific limits |
| Watermark on output | No watermark added | Free exports include a VEED watermark | Free exports include a Kapwing watermark | Standard edits can be watermark-free; templates/assets may add branding |
| Signup / account | No account for tools | Workspace/account flow | Workspace/account flow | CapCut account flow |
| Works offline | Yes after cache, subject to browser support | No | No | No |
| Best for | Private one-step file operations | Full editor, templates, AI tools | Collaboration, templates, AI tools | Social templates and timeline editing |
Vendor plan limits were checked on April 29, 2026 and can change by region, account state, and export option. Verify critical limits on the vendor pricing/help page before relying on them.
Why use this waveform image generator
- A real PNG with an alpha channel, not a screenshot of a player: the waveform drops onto a dark page, a light page or artwork without a box around it.
- It tells you how much audio each pixel column holds before you draw, and warns when that is longer than a word — so a solid-looking block is never a surprise.
- Square root and logarithmic scaling make a quietly-recorded file readable without normalising the audio first, and nothing is written back to the sound.
- Stereo channels can be split top and bottom, and a mono file is detected from the decode so the option turns itself off rather than drawing the same picture twice.
- 100% private — the file is decoded by FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly inside your browser and never uploaded.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my waveform look like a solid block?
Because the image covers the entire file. At 1200 pixels wide, a 10-minute track gives each pixel column half a second of audio, and a 60-minute podcast gives it three seconds — longer than any single word or drum hit, so nothing can appear as its own peak and what you see is the shape of the loudness over the whole file. The tool tells you the seconds-per-column figure before you draw. Use the 1600-wide preset for a third more detail, or cut the file down first and draw the part you care about.
What is the background of the PNG?
There is none. showwavespic draws the waveform onto transparency and the PNG keeps the alpha channel, which is why the preview here sits on a checkerboard. That makes the image usable over any colour, but it also means a white waveform is invisible on a white page — pick the colour for the background it will end up on, not for the one you see here. One more alpha detail: on a stereo file drawn without splitting, the two channels are drawn over each other, so the areas only one channel reaches come out half-transparent and the overlap is solid.
Can I use a video file?
Yes. The audio track is what gets drawn and the picture is ignored entirely, so an MP4, MOV, MKV or WebM works the same as an MP3. A file with no audio track at all cannot produce anything — FFmpeg has no stream to attach the filter to — and the tool says so rather than handing you an empty image.
What does splitting the channels do?
It draws the left channel across the top half of the image and the right across the bottom, instead of overlaying both in the same space. It is worth it when the two channels differ — a stereo mix, or an interview with one person per channel. On a mono file it changes nothing at all, so once the tool has read the file and found one channel it turns the option off and says why.
What do the three amplitude scales change?
Linear plots the sample values as they are, which is honest and is also why a quietly-recorded voice memo draws as a thin line down the middle. Square root and logarithmic bend that curve upward so quiet passages take up more height: square root is the usual choice for a picture, logarithmic pushes so hard that loud and quiet start to look alike. None of them touch the audio — only the drawing.
How long does it take, and how big is the file?
The cost is one decode of the whole file, not of the image, so it scales with length rather than with the size you picked: a 10-minute MP3 took about a second in this engine, and the same file at 800 × 800 took the same time. The PNG itself is tiny — flat colour on transparency compresses well, typically 2 to 15 KB.
Can I get a moving waveform for a video?
Not from this tool — showwavespic renders one still frame of the entire file. For a waveform that moves with the music, use the Audio Visualizer, which records a canvas animation to WebM in the same tab.