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 Data File" file type, you need software like SAMtools or a similar tool.
The .BAM file format primarily stands for Binary Alignment Map. It is the compressed, binary version of a SAM (Sequence Alignment Map) file, widely used in bioinformatics to store DNA sequence alignments against a reference genome. Because these files use BGZF (Blocked GNU Zip Format) compression, they can handle the massive datasets generated by next-generation DNA sequencing. A secondary use for .BAM files is as a compiled binary 3D model format for the Panda3D game engine.
To open or manipulate genomic .BAM files, researchers typically rely on specialized command-line utilities like SAMtools or Picard. You can read more about its specifications on the Wikipedia SAM format page. For Panda3D files, developers use the Panda3D SDK tools.
The main disadvantage of a .BAM file is its absolute opacity to standard desktop software. You cannot open it in a text editor or a generic data viewer. Genomic files frequently exceed 50GB to 100GB, requiring massive computational resources simply to index or read. Furthermore, Panda3D .BAM files are heavily optimized for the engine and strictly tied to the specific software version used to compile them.
Converting a genomic .BAM file to a SAM file makes the data human-readable, though it dramatically inflates the file size. Moving the data to CRAM format is highly recommended, as it provides even better reference-based compression than .BAM. For Panda3D models, developers usually need to decompile the .BAM back to the source EGG format before converting to OBJ or GLTF.
Because .BAM files are either highly specialized bioinformatics containers or compiled engine-specific assets, standard online converters fail to process them. They are difficult to parse without the original software pipelines. However, just drag and drop your file to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible on convert.guru. If our analysis detects standard text headers or an underlying supported format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
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 Data Storage" 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 Data Storage" 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.