Convert WTV to AVI — Free Online Tool
Convert WTV files recorded by Windows Media Center into AVI format using H.264 video and MP3 audio — making your broadcast TV recordings playable on virtually any media player or device. The conversion re-encodes both the video and audio streams, stripping WTV-specific DVR metadata while producing a universally compatible container.
to
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
WTV (Windows Television) files contain recorded broadcast video typically encoded with MPEG-2 or H.264 video and AC-3 or AAC audio, wrapped in a Microsoft DVR container that also holds EPG metadata, chapter markers, and sometimes multiple audio tracks. Converting to AVI requires full re-encoding: the video stream is transcoded to H.264 using libx264 (with CRF 23 for balanced quality), and the audio is transcoded to MP3 using the LAME encoder at 128k bitrate. AVI does not support the subtitle tracks or broadcast metadata that WTV can carry, so those elements are dropped during conversion. The result is a straightforward interleaved audio/video file with no proprietary DVR structure.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg tool. When run in the browser, this executes via FFmpeg.wasm (WebAssembly); when run locally on your desktop, this calls your installed FFmpeg binary and will handle WTV files larger than 1GB without browser memory constraints. |
-i input.wtv
|
Specifies the input WTV file — a Windows Media Center broadcast recording container. FFmpeg reads the WTV/ASF structure and demuxes the internal video, audio, and metadata streams for processing. |
-c:v libx264
|
Transcodes the video stream to H.264 using the libx264 encoder. This is necessary because AVI needs a broadly compatible video codec, and H.264 provides far better compression than the MPEG-2 streams commonly found inside WTV broadcast recordings. |
-c:a libmp3lame
|
Transcodes the audio to MP3 using the LAME encoder. WTV files from broadcast recordings often carry AC-3 or AAC audio, neither of which is the AVI default; LAME MP3 is chosen here for maximum compatibility with legacy media players that target the AVI format. |
-crf 23
|
Sets the H.264 Constant Rate Factor to 23, which is the libx264 default and a widely accepted balance between visual quality and file size. For TV recordings, this typically produces a file noticeably smaller than the original WTV without visible quality degradation at normal viewing distances. |
-b:a 128k
|
Sets the MP3 audio bitrate to 128 kilobits per second. For broadcast TV dialogue and standard stereo audio, 128k MP3 is generally transparent and keeps the AVI file size manageable compared to higher bitrates. |
output.avi
|
Defines the output filename and tells FFmpeg to write an AVI container. The .avi extension triggers FFmpeg's AVI muxer, which uses OpenDML extensions by default to support files larger than the original 2GB AVI limit — important for long WTV recordings. |
Common Use Cases
- Playing back Windows Media Center TV recordings on older hardware media players or smart TVs that don't recognize the WTV container
- Archiving recorded broadcast content into a widely supported legacy format for long-term storage on devices like external hard drives intended for use with older systems
- Importing recorded TV footage into older video editing software (such as legacy versions of Adobe Premiere or Vegas) that supports AVI but not WTV
- Stripping DVR-specific metadata and broadcast protection flags from a WTV recording to allow simpler file handling and playback across platforms
- Sharing a recorded TV segment with someone who uses an older Windows PC where AVI playback is natively supported but WTV requires Windows Media Center to be installed
- Converting a WTV recording for use as a video source in DVD authoring workflows that accept AVI input
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, some quality loss is expected because the video is transcoded to H.264 at CRF 23, even if the original WTV recording was already in H.264. Every encode introduces generational loss. The default CRF 23 is a reasonable middle ground — lower CRF values (like 18) will preserve more quality at the cost of larger file size. Audio is also re-encoded from AAC or AC-3 to MP3 at 128k, which is generally transparent for broadcast TV content but represents a lossy transcode.
AVI has no mechanism for storing the rich EPG metadata that WTV embeds, such as show title, episode description, channel information, or broadcast timestamps. All of that metadata is discarded during conversion. If preserving program metadata is important, consider converting to MKV or MP4 instead, which have more robust metadata containers. Only the core video and audio content survives the WTV-to-AVI conversion.
AVI technically supports multiple audio tracks, and by default this FFmpeg command maps the primary audio stream only. If your WTV recording contains a secondary audio program (SAP) or alternate language track, it will not be included unless you explicitly add a -map flag to the command. To include a second audio track, you would add -map 0:a:0 -map 0:a:1 to the command before the output filename.
WTV files from Windows Media Center often contain the original broadcast MPEG-2 stream, which is encoded at a fixed bitrate typically between 8–15 Mbps. Re-encoding to H.264 at CRF 23 is much more efficient and will usually produce a significantly smaller file for the same visual quality. Conversely, if the original WTV was already a highly compressed H.264 recording, the output AVI size will be similar or slightly larger due to the MP3 audio transcode overhead and container differences.
Adjust the -crf value in the command. The scale runs from 0 (lossless, very large file) to 51 (worst quality, smallest file), with 23 as the default. For broadcast TV recordings where you want a good-quality archive, try -crf 18 for near-transparent quality. For a smaller file where some quality loss is acceptable, use -crf 28. For example: ffmpeg -i input.wtv -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -crf 18 -b:a 192k output.avi
Yes. On Windows, you can use a simple for loop in Command Prompt: for %f in (*.wtv) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -crf 23 -b:a 128k "%~nf.avi". On Linux or macOS, use: for f in *.wtv; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -crf 23 -b:a 128k "${f%.wtv}.avi"; done. Batch processing is particularly valuable for WTV files, which can easily exceed 1GB for hour-long recordings — making the desktop FFmpeg command more practical than the browser-based tool for large libraries.
Technical Notes
WTV is a proprietary Microsoft container introduced in Windows Vista Media Center, and its internal structure is closely related to the Advanced Systems Format (ASF). It commonly wraps MPEG-2 video from over-the-air or cable recordings, though some tuner cards produce H.264-encoded WTV files. The audio track is frequently AC-3 (Dolby Digital) for broadcast recordings, which FFmpeg will transcode to MP3 in this conversion since AVI's libmp3lame audio codec is the output default. Note that WTV files can contain copy-protection flags (broadcast flag or CableCARD protection); FFmpeg can process unencrypted WTV files, but encrypted or DRM-protected recordings will fail to convert. AVI's lack of subtitle support means any closed-caption or teletext subtitle streams embedded in the WTV are silently dropped — users who need subtitles should consider MKV as an output format instead. AVI also has a practical file size limit of 2GB in its original specification, though modern AVI implementations using the OpenDML extension (which FFmpeg uses by default) support much larger files. The interleaved structure of AVI works well for broadcast content that will be played sequentially but is less suited for streaming.