Free online USM to M1V converter

USM files commonly contain game video packaged by CRI Middleware, while M1V is an MPEG-1 video elementary stream required by some older players, authoring tools, and hardware. Conversion is useful when a program cannot open the proprietary USM wrapper or when only the video stream is needed for MPEG-1-compatible editing and playback.

What the USM format is

USM is a video container used by CRI Middleware's Sofdec/CRIWARE technology, especially for cutscenes and other pre-rendered footage in games. Game developers create it through CRI's authoring pipeline; users usually encounter USM files inside extracted game data rather than from desktop video applications.

A USM package can contain video, ADX or other CRI audio, subtitles, metadata, and sometimes encryption or obfuscation. The extension alone does not identify the video codec, so a USM file may require a CRI-aware extractor before a general video converter can read it.

What the M1V format is

M1V is an MPEG-1 video elementary stream. It contains video only, without the audio, subtitles, menus, or container metadata normally found in an MPG or MPEG file.

M1V is useful for older MPEG-1 decoders, broadcast and authoring workflows that accept elementary streams, and applications that need a separate video track. Its MPEG-1 compression is widely supported but produces larger files and lower quality than modern codecs at comparable bitrates.

How to actually convert USM to M1V

Use the built-in online converter

1. Open the USM-to-M1V converter on 101convert.com.
2. Choose the .usm file and select M1V as the output format.
3. Start the conversion and save the resulting .m1v file when processing finishes.

This is the simplest method when the USM is a supported, non-encrypted variant and no local extraction tools are available.

Use a desktop workflow for unsupported or protected files

1. Open the file with a CRI USM extractor, such as the USM tools included in VGMToolbox, and extract the video stream. Some game releases require a separate USM decryption step and a title-specific key.
2. Inspect the extracted stream with MediaInfo or FFprobe. If it is already MPEG-1 video, preserve it when possible; if it uses another codec, transcode it.
3. Convert the extracted video to a raw M1V stream with FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -i extracted_video.bin -an -c:v mpeg1video -f mpeg1video output.m1v

The -an option removes audio because M1V cannot contain it. If the extractor produces a standard video file and FFmpeg can read the USM directly, this shorter command may work:

ffmpeg -i input.usm -an -c:v mpeg1video -f mpeg1video output.m1v

FFmpeg builds differ in USM support, so a demuxer error means the file must be extracted with a CRI-aware tool first rather than that the file is necessarily damaged.

Quality, compatibility, and limitations

USM-to-M1V conversion can lose audio, subtitles, alternate language tracks, and game-specific metadata. Keep the original USM if those components may be needed.

Transcoding to MPEG-1 introduces generation loss. Set the output frame rate to the source rate and choose a bitrate appropriate for the target decoder; forcing a different frame rate can cause judder or audio synchronization problems in a separately converted audio track.

If the source video is already MPEG-1, extraction without re-encoding gives better quality. A raw M1V file may not play by itself in software expecting an MPG container; wrapping the video with compatible audio in an MPEG program stream may be necessary for those players.