Convert WTV to WMA — Free Online Tool
Convert WTV recordings from Windows Media Center into WMA audio files, extracting the audio track and encoding it with the WMA v2 codec at 128k bitrate. Ideal for pulling speech, music, or broadcast audio out of recorded TV files for archiving or playback on Windows-native audio players.
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FFmpeg Command
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Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
WTV files are Windows Media Center DVR containers that typically hold H.264 or MJPEG video alongside AAC or MP3 audio, plus broadcast metadata. During this conversion, FFmpeg discards the video stream entirely and re-encodes the audio track using the wmav2 codec, producing a standalone WMA file. Because the source audio (usually AAC) is not natively compatible with the WMA container, a full audio transcode is required — the audio is decoded from its original format and then re-encoded as WMA v2 at 128k bitrate. This is a lossy-to-lossy transcode, so some generation loss occurs compared to the original broadcast audio.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg tool, which handles reading the WTV container, decoding the broadcast audio, and encoding it into WMA format. |
-i input.wtv
|
Specifies the input Windows Television file. FFmpeg parses the WTV container to identify all available streams, including the video track and one or more audio tracks from the broadcast recording. |
-c:a wmav2
|
Sets the audio codec to WMA version 2, the standard and most compatible WMA encoder. This re-encodes the source audio (typically AAC from a digital broadcast) into the WMA format required by the output container. |
-b:a 128k
|
Sets the target audio bitrate to 128 kilobits per second for the WMA v2 output. This is a reasonable default for broadcast speech and music content, balancing file size against the quality loss inherent in this lossy-to-lossy transcode from AAC to WMA. |
output.wma
|
Defines the output filename and triggers FFmpeg to use the WMA container format. Since WMA is audio-only, the video stream from the WTV recording is automatically excluded from the output. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting a recorded radio program or talk show from a Windows Media Center WTV file to listen to on a portable Windows-based audio player that supports WMA natively
- Archiving the audio commentary or dialogue from a recorded TV broadcast without retaining the large video data, significantly reducing file size
- Preparing recorded TV audio for use in Windows Media Player or older Microsoft Zune devices that prefer or require WMA format
- Converting a recorded lecture or educational broadcast captured via Windows Media Center into a lightweight WMA file for distribution on Windows-centric intranets or SharePoint libraries
- Stripping audio from old WTV DVR recordings to free up disk space while preserving the spoken content or soundtrack in a compact Windows-compatible format
- Repurposing audio from a recorded TV news segment or sports broadcast into a WMA file for archival in a Microsoft-ecosystem digital asset library
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, some quality loss is unavoidable. WTV files typically store audio as AAC or MP3, and converting to WMA v2 requires fully decoding that audio and re-encoding it in a new lossy format. This is a generation loss scenario — each lossy transcode introduces additional artifacts. At 128k bitrate the result is generally acceptable for speech and most broadcast content, but audiophiles may notice a slight degradation compared to the original recording.
The video stream is completely dropped. FFmpeg reads the WTV container, selects only the audio track, and writes it into the WMA output file. WMA is a pure audio format with no container support for video, so no video data is carried over. If you need to keep the video, you should convert to a format like MP4 or MKV instead.
WMA supports standard metadata tags such as title, artist, and album, and FFmpeg will attempt to map compatible metadata fields from the WTV container to WMA tags. However, WTV stores broadcast-specific metadata (such as EPG data, channel information, and recording timestamps) that has no direct equivalent in the WMA tag schema, so most DVR-specific metadata will be lost. Basic fields like title may carry over if they were embedded in the WTV file.
By default, FFmpeg selects the first audio stream found in the WTV file, which is typically the primary language track. WMA does not support multiple audio tracks in a single file, so only one track can be output. If your recording contains a secondary language or descriptive audio track that you want instead, you can specify it by adding '-map 0:a:1' (for the second audio track) to the FFmpeg command before the output filename.
Replace the '-b:a 128k' value in the command with your desired bitrate. For example, use '-b:a 192k' or '-b:a 256k' for higher quality, or '-b:a 96k' for a smaller file. The WMA v2 codec supports bitrates from 64k up to 320k. Higher bitrates reduce the impact of the lossy transcode from the original WTV audio, while lower bitrates save disk space at the cost of more audible compression artifacts.
Yes. On Linux or macOS you can run a loop in the terminal: 'for f in *.wtv; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a wmav2 -b:a 128k "${f%.wtv}.wma"; done'. On Windows Command Prompt you can use: 'for %f in (*.wtv) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:a wmav2 -b:a 128k "%~nf.wma"'. This applies the same conversion settings to every WTV file in the current directory, which is especially useful for bulk-archiving a large Windows Media Center recordings library.
Technical Notes
WTV is a proprietary Microsoft container tied to Windows Vista and later Media Center, using MPEG-2 transport stream internals with extensions for DVR metadata. Audio in WTV recordings is most commonly AAC (from digital cable or ATSC broadcasts) or occasionally MP3. Since neither codec is native to the WMA container, FFmpeg must perform a full audio transcode rather than a simple stream copy. The wmav2 codec (Windows Media Audio version 2) is the default and most widely supported WMA variant, compatible with Windows Media Player, older Microsoft devices, and many embedded Windows systems. The older wmav1 codec is available but should be avoided unless targeting very legacy playback systems. WMA does not support subtitles, chapters, or multiple audio tracks, so any subtitle streams embedded in the WTV file (common in recordings with closed captions) are silently dropped. The resulting WMA file will typically be much smaller than the original WTV since the video stream is discarded — a one-hour HD recording can shrink from several gigabytes to under 60MB at 128k audio bitrate.