Free online DVR-MS to FLAC converter

What the DVR-MS format is

DVR-MS is Microsoft’s Digital Video Recording container, used primarily by Windows Media Center to save television broadcasts and scheduled recordings. It is based on ASF and commonly contains MPEG-2 video with WMA audio, although the exact streams depend on the recording source and system configuration.

You typically encounter .dvr-ms files on older Windows Media Center PCs, archived TV recordings, and backups copied from those systems. Some recordings include Microsoft digital rights management; protected files may not be readable by conversion software.

What the FLAC format is

FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec, compresses PCM audio without discarding audio samples. It is suitable for music libraries, archival copies, editing workflows, and players that support lossless audio.

FLAC files are usually smaller than uncompressed WAV files and retain the quality of the source decoded audio. FLAC is an audio format, so converting a DVR-MS recording to it extracts an audio stream and cannot preserve television video, subtitles, or interactive recording data.

How to convert DVR-MS to FLAC

Using the online converter

1. Open the free converter on 101convert.com.
2. Upload the .dvr-ms file and choose FLAC as the output format.
3. Start the conversion and download the resulting .flac file when processing finishes.

This option requires no installed software. It is suitable when the file is not DRM-protected and the recording does not contain sensitive material.

Using FFmpeg on a computer

FFmpeg can read many DVR-MS files through its ASF demuxer and extract the first audio stream directly:

ffmpeg -i input.dvr-ms -map 0:a:0 -vn -c:a flac output.flac

Replace input.dvr-ms with the actual filename. The -vn option excludes video, -map 0:a:0 selects the first audio stream, and -c:a flac encodes that stream as FLAC.

To preserve source metadata when FFmpeg can read it, use:

ffmpeg -i input.dvr-ms -map 0:a:0 -map_metadata 0 -vn -c:a flac output.flac

If the recording has multiple audio streams, inspect them first with ffmpeg -i input.dvr-ms, then change the stream selector, for example -map 0:a:1 for the second audio stream.

Quality, compatibility, and limitations

FLAC cannot restore detail already lost when the original broadcast audio was encoded as WMA. It preserves the samples produced during decoding, so the conversion is lossless relative to that decoded WMA stream, not lossless relative to the original broadcast signal.

A DVR-MS file may contain DRM restrictions, an unsupported codec, damaged ASF indexes, or an unusual audio stream. If FFmpeg reports that no suitable audio stream exists, try a current FFmpeg build, verify that the file plays locally, and check whether Windows Media Center protection prevents access.

Some players and editors support FLAC but cannot interpret DVR-MS metadata. Verify the sample rate, channel count, and duration after conversion; television recordings commonly contain stereo audio, but broadcasts can also provide mono or multichannel streams.