Convert VOB to WTV — Free Online Tool
Convert VOB files from DVD-Video discs into WTV format compatible with Windows Media Center, transcoding the MPEG-2 video stream to H.264 (libx264) and the AC3 audio to AAC in the process. This is particularly useful for archiving DVD recordings into a DVR-friendly format that integrates with Windows Vista/7/8 Media Center libraries.
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FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
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Settings
Note: Browser-based encoding uses approximate quality targets. For precise CRF compression, copy the FFmpeg command above and run it on your desktop.
Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
VOB files store DVD content using MPEG-2 video and typically AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio, wrapped in a specialized DVD container. WTV, by contrast, is designed around modern broadcast DVR workflows and uses H.264 video and AAC audio. This means the conversion is a full transcode — neither the video nor the audio stream can be copied directly. The MPEG-2 video is decoded frame-by-frame and re-encoded using the libx264 encoder at CRF 23, which provides a good balance between file size and visual quality. The AC3 audio is simultaneously decoded and re-encoded as AAC at 128k bitrate. The output WTV container also supports metadata embedding and multiple audio tracks, similar to VOB, though DVD-specific menu data, navigation packets, and chapter markers from the VOB structure are discarded since WTV has no equivalent for those features.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg tool. In the browser version of this tool, this runs via FFmpeg.wasm (WebAssembly), executing the same logic locally in your browser without uploading your VOB file to any server. |
-i input.vob
|
Specifies the input VOB file. FFmpeg automatically detects the DVD container structure and identifies the multiplexed MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio streams for processing. |
-c:v libx264
|
Sets the video encoder to libx264, which re-encodes the MPEG-2 video from the VOB into H.264 — the codec expected by modern WTV players and far more storage-efficient than the original MPEG-2. |
-c:a aac
|
Sets the audio encoder to AAC, transcoding the AC3 Dolby Digital audio track from the VOB into AAC, which is the standard audio codec for this WTV output configuration. |
-crf 23
|
Sets the Constant Rate Factor for the libx264 encoder to 23, which is the default quality level. Lower values produce higher quality and larger files; higher values produce smaller files with more compression artifacts. This replaces the fixed-bitrate encoding typical of the original MPEG-2 VOB stream. |
-b:a 128k
|
Sets the AAC audio output bitrate to 128 kilobits per second. This is lower than the typical AC3 bitrate in a VOB (often 192k–448k), so increasing this value (e.g., to 192k or 256k) is recommended if audio quality from the original DVD source is a priority. |
output.wtv
|
Specifies the output filename with the .wtv extension, which tells FFmpeg to write the encoded H.264 video and AAC audio into a Windows Television container readable by Windows Media Center. |
Common Use Cases
- Importing ripped DVD content into a Windows Media Center library so it appears alongside recorded TV shows with proper DVR metadata support
- Archiving home DVD recordings (e.g., family events burned to DVD-R) into a more modern H.264-based format while keeping them playable in Windows Media Center
- Converting DVD video content from a legacy DVD camcorder into WTV so it can be managed and played back through a Windows Home Server with Media Center extenders
- Replacing large, inefficient MPEG-2 encoded VOB files with H.264 WTV files that occupy significantly less storage while maintaining comparable visual quality
- Preparing DVD-sourced content for playback on Windows-based HTPC setups that are configured to use Media Center as the primary media frontend
- Consolidating a mixed library of recorded TV (already in WTV) and ripped DVDs (in VOB) into a single unified WTV format for consistent playback and organization
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, this is a lossy-to-lossy transcode, so some generation loss is introduced. However, H.264 at CRF 23 is generally more efficient than the MPEG-2 encoding used in VOB files, meaning the output can often look similar or even slightly cleaner at a smaller file size. The most noticeable quality cost comes from re-encoding the AC3 audio to AAC at 128k — if audio fidelity is critical, consider increasing the audio bitrate to 192k or 256k in the FFmpeg command using the -b:a flag.
The AC3 audio stream from the VOB is fully decoded and re-encoded as AAC, since WTV in this configuration uses AAC rather than AC3. This means the Dolby Digital surround sound encoding is lost — AAC at 128k is a stereo-focused format and will not preserve discrete 5.1 channel surround in the same way. If you need to retain surround sound, you could increase the AAC bitrate significantly or explore whether your WTV player supports an alternative audio codec.
Both VOB and WTV support subtitle streams, but DVD VOB subtitles are stored as bitmap-based subtitle images (DVD subpicture format), which are not automatically mapped by default in this FFmpeg command. To attempt to carry subtitle streams into the WTV output, you would need to add -c:s copy or a subtitle mapping flag, though compatibility between DVD bitmap subtitles and the WTV container is limited and may not work reliably in all playback scenarios.
H.264 (libx264 at CRF 23) is significantly more compression-efficient than MPEG-2, so for most DVD-sourced content you should expect the WTV output to be noticeably smaller than the original VOB — often 30–60% smaller for typical video. However, if the original VOB was encoded at a very low DVD bitrate or contained highly compressed content, the size difference may be less dramatic. The audio re-encoding from AC3 to AAC at 128k typically reduces audio size as well.
The video quality is controlled by the -crf flag, which accepts values from 0 (lossless/largest) to 51 (worst quality/smallest). The default used here is 23, which is libx264's standard default and suitable for most purposes. To increase quality, lower the CRF value — for example, use -crf 18 for near-transparent quality or -crf 28 for a smaller file with more compression. You can also raise the audio bitrate with -b:a 192k or -b:a 256k if the downmixed AAC audio sounds thin compared to the original Dolby Digital track.
Yes. On Windows, you can use a simple batch script: place all your VOB files in a folder and run a for loop such as 'for %f in (*.vob) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -crf 23 -b:a 128k "%~nf.wtv"' from the command prompt. On Linux or macOS, the equivalent bash one-liner is 'for f in *.vob; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -crf 23 -b:a 128k "${f%.vob}.wtv"; done'. Note that since this is a full transcode (not a remux), batch processing multiple large VOB files will be CPU-intensive and time-consuming.
Technical Notes
VOB files are structurally complex DVD containers that can include multiple MPEG-2 video angles, multiple AC3 or DTS audio tracks for different languages, DVD subpicture bitmap subtitles, and navigation/menu data — none of which map cleanly to WTV. This FFmpeg command selects the default video and audio streams only, discarding secondary audio tracks, subtitle bitmap streams, and all DVD navigation packets. The libx264 encoder used for the output WTV is a software encoder and will utilize your CPU — encoding speed depends heavily on hardware, and large VOB files (e.g., a full DVD at 4–8GB) can take several minutes even on modern machines. The WTV container supports metadata embedding fields like episode title, channel, and broadcast time, but FFmpeg does not automatically populate these from VOB source metadata since VOB carries no equivalent broadcast metadata. If you are processing concatenated VOB files (VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB, etc.) from a DVD rip, you may want to use a concat input or pre-join them, as processing a single chapter VOB in isolation may produce a file without proper start/end context.