Extract text from Binary alignment map files (BAM)
To convert BAM Alignment maps to another format, you need SAMtools or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Genomic Sequencing Data" file type, you need software like SAMtools or a similar tool.
A .BAM file is the Binary Alignment Map format, a compressed binary version of the Sequence Alignment/Map (SAM) file used in bioinformatics to store nucleotide sequence alignments. Because it is a binary file using BGZF (Block GZIP) compression, you cannot open it in a standard text editor like Notepad; attempting to do so will result in unintelligible gibberish.
Users frequently need to convert .BAM files because they are not human-readable and often require specialized command-line tools like SAMtools or visualization software like IGV to interpret. The primary conversion goal is usually to generate a SAM file (tab-delimited text) to inspect the alignment headers and reads manually. For archiving, users convert to CRAM (which offers higher compression), and for downstream analysis, they often extract raw sequence data to FASTQ or genomic regions to BED formats.
*Note: If you are a game developer, this file may alternatively be a Panda3D binary model file used to store 3D assets optimized for fast loading.*
Convert.Guru analyzes your BAM file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted BAI, SAM, ZIP, RAR, CRAM, X3DB, ORC, FASTA, BED and VCF files.
If you want to convert BAM file to CRAM, FASTA, BED, VCF, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI or CFG, you can use SAMtools or similar software from the "Genomic Sequence Alignment" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to BAM, try SAMtools or another comparable tool in the "Genomic Sequence Alignment" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our BAM converter.