Extract Audio from WTV to FLAC — Free Online Tool
Extract lossless audio from Windows Media Center TV recordings (.wtv) and save it as FLAC. Because WTV files typically store AAC or MP3 audio from digital broadcast streams, this tool re-encodes that audio to FLAC — preserving the full quality ceiling of the original broadcast audio in an open, archival-grade format.
to
FFmpeg Command
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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 DVR containers used by Windows Vista/7 Media Center to store digital broadcast recordings, and they carry audio encoded in AAC or MP3 alongside an H.264 video stream and embedded broadcast metadata. This conversion strips the video stream entirely using the -vn flag and re-encodes the audio track using the FLAC codec at compression level 5. Because the source audio is typically lossy AAC or MP3 from a broadcast signal, the FLAC output is a lossless representation of that already-decoded audio — meaning no additional quality is lost in the extraction process itself, even though FLAC cannot recover quality that was already discarded by the original broadcast encoding. The result is a bit-perfect, compressed-lossless archive of the audio as it existed in the WTV recording.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg tool. In the browser-based version of this tool, FFmpeg runs as a WebAssembly module (FFmpeg.wasm) entirely within your browser — no file is sent to a server. When run locally on your desktop, this calls your system-installed FFmpeg binary. |
-i input.wtv
|
Specifies the input file — a WTV container produced by Windows Media Center. FFmpeg will demux the file to access its video stream (typically H.264), audio stream (typically AAC or MP3), and any embedded broadcast metadata. |
-vn
|
Disables video output entirely, instructing FFmpeg to ignore the H.264 video stream from the WTV recording. This ensures the output FLAC file contains only audio, with no attempt to encode or attach video data that FLAC cannot store. |
-c:a flac
|
Sets the audio codec for the output to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). FFmpeg will decode the source AAC or MP3 audio from the WTV file and re-encode it using the FLAC encoder, producing a lossless compressed audio file. |
-compression_level 5
|
Sets the FLAC compression effort to level 5, the FFmpeg default on a scale of 0–8. This affects only encoding speed and output file size — all compression levels produce bit-identical audio. Level 5 is a sensible default for extracting broadcast TV audio without prioritizing either speed or maximum compression. |
output.flac
|
Defines the output filename and format. The .flac extension tells FFmpeg to write the result as a FLAC audio file. This file will contain the decoded-and-re-encoded audio from the WTV recording, along with any broadcast metadata that FFmpeg was able to map into FLAC's Vorbis comment tag format. |
Common Use Cases
- Archiving the audio commentary or dialogue track from a recorded documentary or news broadcast for long-term storage without further quality degradation
- Extracting a recorded live concert or music performance from a WTV DVR file into FLAC for a high-quality music library
- Preserving the audio from a recorded TV special or sporting event broadcast after deleting the large WTV video file to free up disk space
- Pulling the audio from a Windows Media Center recording to use as source material for transcription, captioning, or podcast editing workflows
- Converting a WTV audio track to FLAC as an intermediate archival step before further lossy encoding to MP3 or AAC for distribution
- Extracting recorded radio-over-TV or classical music broadcasts from WTV format for audiophile listening without re-encoding losses
Frequently Asked Questions
FLAC itself is lossless, but the audio inside a WTV file was already encoded with a lossy codec — typically AAC or MP3 — when the broadcast was captured by Windows Media Center. This means the FLAC output is a lossless copy of that lossy-compressed audio: no further quality is lost during this extraction, but any quality discarded by the original broadcast encoding cannot be recovered. Think of it as freezing the audio at its current quality ceiling rather than restoring it to raw broadcast fidelity.
By default, FFmpeg selects the first audio stream it finds in the WTV file, which is usually the primary program audio. WTV supports multiple audio tracks from broadcast streams, so if your recording includes a secondary language track or descriptive audio service, you would need to specify the track explicitly using the -map flag, for example adding '-map 0:a:1' to select the second audio stream before the output filename.
FLAC compression level controls how hard the encoder works to reduce file size, on a scale from 0 (fastest, largest files) to 8 (slowest, smallest files). Crucially, all levels produce bit-identical audio — only the file size and encoding speed differ. Level 5 is the FFmpeg default and strikes a practical balance for typical broadcast audio content. For TV recordings you are archiving, level 8 will produce slightly smaller files at the cost of longer encoding time, while level 0 is useful if you need the extraction to complete as quickly as possible.
WTV files embed rich broadcast metadata including program title, episode description, channel information, and recording timestamps using Microsoft's DVR metadata schema. FFmpeg will attempt to map some of these fields into FLAC's Vorbis comment tags, but not all WTV-specific metadata has direct equivalents in the FLAC tag format. Common fields like title may transfer, but DVR-specific data such as channel number or broadcast time may not appear in the output. If preserving metadata is critical, inspect the output FLAC tags with a tool like MediaInfo or a tag editor after conversion.
Replace the '5' in '-compression_level 5' with any integer from 0 to 8. For example, 'ffmpeg -i input.wtv -vn -c:a flac -compression_level 8 output.flac' produces the most compressed output with no difference in audio quality, while '-compression_level 0' encodes as fast as possible. This is especially useful for large WTV recordings from long broadcasts where encoding time may be a concern.
Yes. On Windows, you can use a simple batch loop: 'for %f in (*.wtv) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a flac -compression_level 5 "%~nf.flac"'. On Linux or macOS, the equivalent shell loop is 'for f in *.wtv; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a flac -compression_level 5 "${f%.wtv}.flac"; done'. This is particularly valuable for users with a large archive of Windows Media Center recordings who want to extract and preserve all audio tracks in bulk.
Technical Notes
WTV is a Microsoft-proprietary container format introduced in Windows Vista Media Center, and FFmpeg's support for it is read-only and generally reliable for files produced by Windows 7 Media Center, though some recordings from third-party DVR software using the WTV wrapper may behave differently. The audio codec inside WTV files is almost always AAC (from ATSC digital broadcasts) or MP3 (from analog captures), both of which FFmpeg decodes natively before re-encoding to FLAC. Because FLAC is a lossless codec, the conversion pipeline is: WTV container → decode lossy AAC/MP3 → encode to lossless FLAC. The output file size will typically be larger than the audio-only portion of the WTV file because FLAC achieves less compression than AAC or MP3 at typical broadcast bitrates (128–192 kbps). FLAC does not support multiple audio tracks in a single file, so if your WTV recording contains secondary audio services, only one track can be extracted per command. Additionally, WTV subtitle and closed-caption streams are not carried into FLAC, as the format has no subtitle support.