Convert WMV to OGG — Free Online Tool
Convert WMV video files to OGG audio format by extracting and re-encoding the audio stream using the Vorbis codec — stripping the Microsoft ASF container and Windows Media Audio entirely. This is ideal for pulling audio from WMV recordings into a fully open, patent-free format compatible with Linux media players, web browsers, and Xiph.Org-based workflows.
to
FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
Drop your WMV file here
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Free — no uploads, no signups. Your files never leave your browser.
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
WMV files are built on Microsoft's Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container and typically carry video encoded with MS-MPEG4 and audio encoded with WMA (Windows Media Audio v2). Because OGG is a pure audio container with no video codec support in this context, the video stream is completely discarded during conversion — it is not transcoded, just dropped. The WMA audio stream cannot be copied directly into OGG because the container only supports Xiph codecs, so the audio is fully decoded from WMA and then re-encoded using the libvorbis encoder at a variable bitrate quality level of 4 (approximately 128 kbps). The result is a self-contained .ogg file with a Vorbis audio stream, free from any Microsoft proprietary encoding.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the underlying engine that powers this browser-based conversion via its WebAssembly build (FFmpeg.wasm). The same binary is used whether running locally or in the browser. |
-i input.wmv
|
Specifies the input file, an ASF-containerized WMV file carrying MS-MPEG4 video and WMA v2 audio. FFmpeg reads and demuxes both streams from the ASF container before processing. |
-c:a libvorbis
|
Sets the audio codec to libvorbis, the Xiph.Org Vorbis encoder. This is required because OGG cannot carry the original WMA audio — the WMA stream must be fully decoded and re-encoded into Vorbis, the OGG container's primary supported codec. |
-q:a 4
|
Sets the Vorbis encoder's variable bitrate quality level to 4 on a scale of 0–10, targeting approximately 128 kbps average output bitrate. This balances file size and audio fidelity for typical WMV sources like recordings or presentations. |
output.ogg
|
Defines the output filename and signals FFmpeg to use the OGG container format. The .ogg extension causes FFmpeg to mux the Vorbis audio stream into a standard Ogg bitstream, dropping the WMV's video and ASF container entirely. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting the audio commentary or narration from a WMV screen recording or tutorial video to publish as a standalone audio file on a Linux-based podcast platform
- Converting WMV files from older Windows Media Player libraries into OGG Vorbis for playback in open-source media players like VLC, Rhythmbox, or Amarok without requiring Windows Media codecs
- Stripping audio from WMV corporate training videos or presentations to create accessible audio-only versions for distribution on intranet portals that serve Linux or Chromebook users
- Archiving audio from WMV recordings in an open, patent-free format to ensure long-term playback compatibility without dependency on Microsoft's codec ecosystem
- Preparing audio extracted from WMV files for use in open-source video editors like Kdenlive or OpenShot, which handle OGG Vorbis natively without additional codec installation
- Converting WMV audio tracks to OGG for embedding in HTML5 web pages, where OGG Vorbis has broad browser support as an open alternative to MP3 or AAC
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, some quality loss is unavoidable because this is a transcode between two lossy formats — WMA v2 (from the WMV file) is fully decoded to raw PCM audio and then re-encoded into Vorbis. This generation loss is generally subtle at the default quality level 4 setting (roughly equivalent to 128 kbps), but it is not a lossless operation. If the original WMA audio was already low bitrate (e.g., 64k), starting from a degraded source will compound any artifacts in the output.
The video stream is completely discarded. OGG is used here purely as an audio container supporting Vorbis, Opus, and FLAC — it does not carry video in this conversion pipeline. If you need to retain the video alongside converted audio, you would need a different output format such as OGV (Ogg with Theora video) or WebM. This tool extracts only the audio from your WMV.
The OGG container is designed exclusively for Xiph.Org codecs — primarily Vorbis, Opus, and FLAC. WMA (Windows Media Audio) is a Microsoft proprietary codec that is fundamentally incompatible with the OGG container's stream encapsulation format. There is no way to stream-copy WMA into OGG; the audio must be fully decoded and re-encoded into a supported Xiph codec like libvorbis.
The quality is controlled by the '-q:a 4' flag, which uses Vorbis's variable bitrate quality scale from 0 (lowest, ~64 kbps) to 10 (highest, ~500 kbps). To increase quality, raise the number — for example, replace '4' with '7' for approximately 220 kbps output. To reduce file size at the cost of quality, lower the number to '2' or '3'. Unlike the WMV input which uses fixed bitrate parameters (-b:v, -b:a), libvorbis works best with this quality-based VBR approach.
Basic metadata fields like title, artist, and album that exist in the WMV's ASF container will typically be mapped and carried over into OGG's Vorbis comment metadata format by FFmpeg automatically. However, WMV-specific metadata structures — including any DRM licensing information or Windows Media Player-specific tags — will not be transferred. OGG Vorbis comments use a simple key=value text format, so any complex or proprietary metadata from the ASF container will be lost.
Yes. On Linux or macOS you can loop over files in a directory with a shell command such as: for f in *.wmv; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 "${f%.wmv}.ogg"; done. On Windows PowerShell, use: Get-ChildItem *.wmv | ForEach-Object { ffmpeg -i $_.FullName -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 ($_.BaseName + '.ogg') }. This is particularly useful for converting large WMV archives since the browser-based tool handles files up to 1GB individually.
Technical Notes
WMV files encapsulated in the ASF (Advanced Systems Format) container present a specific challenge for OGG conversion because neither the container nor its default codecs (MS-MPEG4, WMA v2) have any compatibility pathway with the Xiph codec family. The conversion is therefore a full decode-and-reencode of the audio, with the video stream silently dropped via implicit stream selection — FFmpeg detects no compatible video codec for OGG and maps only the audio. The libvorbis encoder used here produces true VBR output governed by a quality scale rather than a target bitrate, which tends to yield better perceptual quality per kilobyte than the CBR/ABR WMA encoding used in most WMV files. One known limitation is that WMV files with DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection cannot be processed — FFmpeg cannot decrypt protected ASF streams, and the conversion will fail or produce silence. Additionally, WMV files containing multiple audio tracks will have only the first (default) audio track mapped to the OGG output unless the FFmpeg command is explicitly modified with stream mapping flags. Chapter support, which OGG containers do technically allow, is not transferred from WMV since ASF chapter markers use a proprietary structure that does not map cleanly to OGG chapter format.