Free online WMV to WAV converter

A .wmv recording may need to become WAV when an audio editor, transcription workflow, or hardware recorder accepts PCM audio but cannot import a video container. The process removes the video stream and saves the WMV file’s audio as a separate audio file.

What WMV is

WMV (Windows Media Video) is a Microsoft video format associated with Windows Media technologies. Files with the .wmv extension normally use the ASF container and may contain a WMV video stream with audio encoded as Windows Media Audio (WMA) or another ASF-supported audio codec.

WMV is common in older Windows screen recordings, corporate training archives, presentations, and media exported by legacy Microsoft software. Extracting WAV audio does not retain video, subtitles, chapters, or most ASF metadata.

What WAV is

WAV is a RIFF-based audio container most commonly used for uncompressed PCM audio. PCM WAV is accepted by most audio editors, DAWs, transcription tools, Windows applications, and many recorders that require files such as 16-bit PCM, 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz.

WAV is useful for editing because PCM is not lossy compressed. It is much larger than WMA: one hour of stereo, 16-bit, 44.1 kHz PCM WAV occupies about 600 MiB. WAV can also contain compressed audio, so an application that requires a standard WAV file may specifically require PCM, not merely a .wav filename.

Convert a WMV file to WAV

To convert without installing software, upload the .wmv file on 101convert.com, choose WAV as the output format, start processing, and download the result. Use the downloaded file in the receiving application after checking its required sample rate, channel count, and PCM bit depth.

For local conversion and explicit settings, use FFmpeg. In Command Prompt, PowerShell, or Terminal, change to the folder containing the source file and run:

ffmpeg -i input.wmv -map 0:a:0 -c:a pcm_s16le output.wav

-map 0:a:0 selects the first audio stream, and pcm_s16le creates conventional 16-bit little-endian PCM WAV. Quote filenames containing spaces:

ffmpeg -i "Meeting recording.wmv" -map 0:a:0 -c:a pcm_s16le "Meeting recording.wav"

If a speech system requires 16 kHz mono audio, resample and downmix only for that required output:

ffmpeg -i input.wmv -map 0:a:0 -ac 1 -ar 16000 -c:a pcm_s16le output.wav

Quality and compatibility limits

Converting WMA or another lossy source codec to WAV does not restore detail removed by the original compression. WAV avoids an additional lossy encoding step, but its quality cannot exceed the decoded audio in the WMV source.

Keep the original sample rate and channel layout unless the destination specifies otherwise. Retain 48 kHz stereo for most video-production audio; use mono, 8 kHz, or 16 kHz only when a telephone, speech-recognition, or transcription system requires it.

Some WMV files have no audio stream, and others may contain multiple language tracks. Play the source first or select the required track with FFmpeg; no useful WAV can be created from a WMV file that contains no audible audio. For older software and hardware, use 16-bit PCM WAV; 24-bit, 32-bit float, compressed WAV, and files larger than 4 GB may not be accepted.