Free online USM to M4V converter

What the USM format is

USM is a proprietary CRI Middleware container used mainly for pre-rendered video in console and PC games. Game publishers create it with CRIWARE tools, and files commonly appear in a game's movie, video, or cutscene directories. A USM can contain interleaved video and audio streams, CRI ADX or HCA audio, proprietary metadata, and sometimes encryption or obfuscation. Renaming movie.usm to movie.m4v does not convert the codecs or container.

What the M4V format is

M4V is an MPEG-4 video container closely related to MP4 and commonly associated with Apple software and devices. It normally stores H.264 or MPEG-4 video with AAC audio, supports subtitles and chapter metadata in suitable workflows, and is accepted by many media players and editing applications. Use M4V when the destination application specifically requests that extension or when H.264/AAC playback compatibility is the target.

How to actually convert USM to M4V

For a quick conversion without installing software, use the converter on 101convert.com: upload the USM file, select M4V as the output, start the conversion, and download the result. This works only when the service can decode that particular USM variant; encrypted or unusual game files may fail.

For local processing, first try a current FFmpeg build:

ffmpeg -i input.usm -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset medium -c:a aac -b:a 192k -movflags +faststart output.m4v

If FFmpeg reports an unsupported format, missing decoder, or encrypted stream, demultiplex the file with VGMToolbox. Open the USM demultiplexer under Misc. Tools → Misc. → Multimedia, select the input file, and extract the video and audio streams. The exact menu name varies by VGMToolbox release.

After extraction, use the appropriate command for the resulting streams. If the extracted video is H.264 and the audio is AAC, mux them without another lossy encode:

ffmpeg -i video.h264 -i audio.aac -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 -c:v copy -c:a copy -movflags +faststart output.m4v

If the extracted audio is WAV or another decoded format, encode it as AAC while copying H.264 video:

ffmpeg -i video.h264 -i audio.wav -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 -c:v copy -c:a aac -b:a 192k -movflags +faststart output.m4v

If the extracted video codec is not suitable for the target player, re-encode both streams:

ffmpeg -i extracted_video -i extracted_audio -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset medium -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -b:a 192k -movflags +faststart output.m4v

Quality, compatibility, and limitations

• Stream copying preserves the original decoded quality; re-encoding reduces quality and takes longer, but it is required when the source codec is incompatible with the destination player.
• USM files can be encrypted or protected by a game-specific key. Conversion tools cannot generally decode such content without the correct key and compatible tooling; process only files you are authorized to extract.
• Some USM files contain multiple audio tracks, subtitles, or separate language streams. Inspect FFmpeg output and select tracks with additional -map options instead of assuming the first stream is the required one.
• M4V is a container extension, not a guaranteed codec profile. For broad compatibility, H.264 video, AAC-LC audio, and yuv420p pixel format are safer choices than copying uncommon game codecs.