# File Export Dialog

### From Audacity Manual

Clicking Export... on the File Menu pops up the Export File dialog:

This lets you specify the folder location and file name of your exported file, and its format (Save as type). The Options button pops up a further dialog for choosing alternative quality settings for each format, as in this example for Uncompressed Options:

Therefore, always select the "Save as type" before clicking the Options button. For details of the available options for each format, click its link in the following list of "Save as types":

- WAV, AIFF and other uncompressed types: Includes all the uncompressed audio formats that Audacity can export to. On Windows, the format defaults to WAV (Microsoft 16 bit PCM), and on Macs it defaults to AIFF (Apple/SGI 16 bit PCM), but WAV and AIFF can both be opened on either Windows or Mac computers. Both WAV and AIFF are lossless. Choose WAV or AIFF at these default settings whenever you want to burn your exported file to an audio CD.
- MP3 Files: The popular compressed, lossy MP3 format is exported using the LAME MP3 encoder. Use this option if you want a much smaller file than WAV or AIFF, with some loss of audio quality. The format defaults to 128 kbps bit rate, giving you a file of about 1 MB per minute of audio.
- OGG Vorbis Files: Ogg Vorbis is another compressed, lossy format. Compared to MP3, it offers higher quality for the same file size, but fewer applications can play this format.
- FLAC Files: Despite being compressed, FLAC is lossless like WAV and AIFF. However, FLAC files are larger than MP3s and OGGs, normally taking about 4 MB per minute of audio.
- MP2 Files: MP2 is a compressed, lossy format similar to MP3. It defaults to a 160 kbps bit rate. This produces comparable quality to 128 kbps MP3, but larger files. It's mainly used at higher bit rates in DVD soundtracks and radio broadcasting.
- (external program): This sends audio via a command line to an external application either for processing or for encoding as a file. This is a way for example to export to an alternative MP3 encoder, or to a format not supported by Audacity.

- In FFmpeg-enabled builds, there will be a few additional export types available underneath "(external program)", marked with "(FFmpeg)". These are always present in FFmpeg-enabled builds of Audacity, but will only work if you install the FFmpeg libraries.

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