Convert WTV to FLAC — Free Online Tool
Convert WTV recordings from Windows Media Center directly to FLAC, extracting the audio track as a lossless compressed file. This tool strips the video and re-encodes the embedded AAC audio stream into FLAC — preserving full audio fidelity from your TV recordings without any quality degradation.
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FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
Drop your WTV file here
or click to browse
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
WTV files are Windows Media Center DVR containers that typically store H.264 video alongside AAC or AC-3 audio, plus broadcast metadata like program titles and channel information. During this conversion, FFmpeg discards the video stream entirely and re-encodes the audio track using the FLAC codec. Because FLAC is lossless, the encoder mathematically compresses the decoded audio waveform so it can be perfectly reconstructed on playback — no frequency information is thrown away. Note that since the source audio in WTV files is usually AAC (a lossy format), the FLAC output will be a lossless representation of that already-lossy audio; it will not recover quality lost during the original broadcast encoding, but it will not introduce any further degradation.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg application. In the browser version of this tool, this runs via FFmpeg.wasm, a WebAssembly port that executes the same conversion logic entirely within your browser without sending your WTV file to any server. |
-i input.wtv
|
Specifies the input WTV file — the Windows Media Center recording container. FFmpeg parses the WTV structure to identify all available streams, including the H.264 or MPEG-2 video track and the AAC or AC-3 audio track embedded from the original broadcast. |
-c:a flac
|
Sets the audio codec to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). FFmpeg will decode the source audio stream from the WTV file and re-encode it into lossless FLAC — no audio information is discarded during this step, unlike lossy codecs such as MP3 or AAC. |
-compression_level 5
|
Controls the FLAC compression effort on a scale of 0 (fastest, largest file) to 8 (slowest, smallest file). Level 5 is the FLAC default and produces a good balance of file size reduction and encoding speed — importantly, all compression levels produce identical audio; only the file size and encoding time differ. |
output.flac
|
Defines the output file as a FLAC audio file. Because FLAC is an audio-only format, FFmpeg automatically drops the video stream from the WTV source — no explicit '-vn' flag is required since there is no video codec available in the FLAC container. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting the audio from a recorded concert or live music performance broadcast on TV to archive it in a high-quality, space-efficient lossless format
- Pulling audio from a recorded radio-on-TV or simulcast broadcast to add to a lossless music library alongside ripped CDs
- Archiving the audio track of a recorded documentary or spoken-word program in FLAC for long-term storage where re-encoding losses should be minimized
- Preparing audio from a WTV recording for editing in a DAW or audio workstation that works best with lossless source files rather than compressed formats like MP3 or AAC
- Converting a Windows Media Center recording of a music video channel to FLAC to import the audio into a lossless-only media player or NAS music library
- Extracting clean audio from a WTV file for use as a reference track when comparing broadcast audio quality against other sources
Frequently Asked Questions
The FLAC file will be a lossless representation of the decoded AAC audio stream — meaning no additional quality is lost during this conversion. However, AAC is itself a lossy codec used in broadcast recording, so any quality removed during the original TV broadcast encoding is already gone and cannot be recovered. Think of FLAC here as a lossless container for audio that was previously lossy — it preserves exactly what was in the WTV file without making things worse.
The video stream is completely discarded since FLAC is an audio-only format. Broadcast metadata embedded in the WTV container — such as the program title, channel name, and air date — is also not carried over, because FLAC's metadata system uses its own Vorbis comment tags and has no equivalent fields for TV guide data. If you need to preserve that information, note it manually before converting or consider embedding basic tags like TITLE and ARTIST in the FLAC file afterward.
By default, FFmpeg selects the first audio stream in the WTV file, which is typically the primary language track. FLAC does not support multiple audio tracks in a single file, so only one stream can be output. If you need a specific secondary track, you can modify the FFmpeg command by adding '-map 0:a:1' (for the second audio stream) before the output filename to select it explicitly.
You can change the '-compression_level' value to any integer between 0 and 8. Level 0 gives the fastest encoding with the largest file size, while level 8 produces the smallest file but takes significantly longer to encode. Crucially, all compression levels produce bit-for-bit identical audio output — FLAC compression is always lossless regardless of the level you choose. The default of 5 is a well-balanced choice for most use cases.
The FLAC output will be dramatically smaller than the WTV file because it contains only the audio stream — all video data is removed. A one-hour WTV recording might be 4–8 GB with video, while the extracted FLAC audio could be 200–600 MB depending on the source audio bitrate and FLAC compression level. The audio-only FLAC file will generally be larger than an equivalent MP3 or AAC file, since lossless compression retains all audio data.
The displayed command processes one file at a time, but on your local desktop you can batch process using a shell loop. On Linux or macOS, you can run: 'for f in *.wtv; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a flac -compression_level 5 "${f%.wtv}.flac"; done'. On Windows Command Prompt, use: 'for %f in (*.wtv) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a flac -compression_level 5 "%~nf.flac"'. This is one reason the page shows the exact FFmpeg command — for large collections, running it locally is far more practical than using the browser tool.
Technical Notes
WTV is a proprietary Microsoft container format introduced in Windows Vista Media Center, and FFmpeg's support for it covers the most common codec combinations found in real-world recordings: H.264 or MPEG-2 video paired with AAC or AC-3 audio. When targeting FLAC output, FFmpeg decodes whichever audio codec is present in the WTV file and re-encodes the raw PCM audio into FLAC — this means both AAC and AC-3 source tracks are handled correctly. FLAC supports up to 8 channels and sample rates up to 655,350 Hz, so multi-channel 5.1 surround audio from a broadcast recording is preserved in channel layout during conversion. One known limitation is that FLAC does not support multiple audio tracks in a single file, so if your WTV has secondary audio streams (e.g., SAP or alternate language), only the default stream will be included. Additionally, WTV chapter and DVR metadata structures have no direct mapping to FLAC's Vorbis comment tag system, so program scheduling information will be lost. The '-compression_level 5' default strikes a practical balance: it typically achieves 40–60% size reduction over uncompressed PCM while keeping encoding times reasonable for large broadcast recordings.