Free online WMV to TS converter

A television, IPTV system, broadcast application, or media server may require an MPEG transport stream instead of a Windows Media Video file. Conversion creates a .ts container with codecs selected for the receiving device.

WMV format

WMV is a Microsoft family of video codecs, usually stored in an ASF container using the .wmv extension. It was widely used by Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Media Encoder, corporate video systems, and older Windows screen-recording workflows.

WMV files commonly contain WMV7, WMV8, WMV9, or VC-1 video with WMA audio. Although these codecs remain supported by many Windows applications, televisions, set-top boxes, broadcast encoders, Linux media tools, and web-video pipelines may not accept them.

TS format

TS, or MPEG transport stream, is a container designed for broadcast and transmission. It is used in DVB, ATSC 1.0, IPTV, and related video-delivery workflows. Its fixed-size packets and repeated program information help receivers synchronize streams and recover after interruptions or packet loss.

A TS file may contain H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, MPEG-2 video, and audio such as AAC, MP2, or AC-3. The .ts extension alone does not ensure playback: the destination must support the embedded video codec, audio codec, resolution, frame rate, and bitrate.

Convert WMV to TS

Upload the WMV file to the converter on 101convert.com, select TS as the output format, start conversion, and download the resulting .ts file. Test the file on the intended device or in the target application before deleting the source file.

For local conversion and explicit codec control, use FFmpeg. Open a terminal in the folder containing the source file and run:

ffmpeg -i input.wmv -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a? -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset medium -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -b:a 160k -f mpegts output.ts

This creates an H.264 video and AAC audio transport stream. -crf 20 is a quality-based H.264 setting; lower values such as 18 increase file size and retain more detail, while higher values such as 23 reduce file size with more compression. yuv420p improves compatibility with older H.264 decoders.

Some older televisions and broadcast-oriented equipment require MPEG-2 video and MP2 audio:

ffmpeg -i input.wmv -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a? -c:v mpeg2video -q:v 2 -c:a mp2 -b:a 192k -f mpegts output.ts

Use this profile only when required by the destination. MPEG-2 is substantially less compression-efficient than H.264, so it usually produces larger files at similar visual quality.

Quality and compatibility limits

Most conversions must re-encode the source because WMV video and WMA audio are not broadly compatible with TS playback devices. Re-encoding cannot restore detail lost in the original WMV file.

Renaming input.wmv to input.ts does not convert the container or codecs. A stream-copy command such as -c copy can retain incompatible WMV or WMA streams and should not be used unless the receiving system explicitly supports them.

TS is a container, not a compression format. Output size depends mainly on the selected codec, quality setting or bitrate, audio bitrate, resolution, and frame rate. Keep the original resolution and frame rate unless the target device specifies limits, because scaling and frame-rate conversion can add quality loss.

A single .ts file is not an HLS stream. HLS delivery normally requires multiple TS segments and an .m3u8 playlist.