Free online WTV to FLAC converter

WTV files are Windows Media Center recordings, while FLAC is commonly accepted by audio editors, players, and archival workflows. Converting extracts the selected audio stream from the television recording and saves it as a standalone, lossless FLAC file.

What the WTV format is

WTV, or Windows Recorded TV Show, is a Microsoft container used by Windows Media Center in Windows Vista and Windows 7. TV tuner software saved scheduled broadcasts and live recordings as .wtv files, including video, one or more audio streams, program metadata, and sometimes closed captions.

WTV is not an audio-only format. Its audio is commonly encoded as AAC or AC-3, depending on the broadcast and recording system. Windows Media Center recordings may also be protected by DRM; protected files cannot be converted unless the recording can be legally decoded by the playback software.

What the FLAC format is

FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec, stores PCM audio without discarding additional information during encoding. It supports metadata such as artist, album, title, and cover art, and generally produces smaller files than uncompressed WAV or AIFF.

FLAC is useful for editing, long-term audio storage, and playback on software and devices that support lossless codecs. It does not preserve WTV video, broadcast metadata, captions, or the original container; it contains only the selected audio stream.

How to actually convert WTV to FLAC

Using FFmpeg

1. Install a current FFmpeg build and place the WTV file in an accessible folder.
2. Inspect the streams to identify the available audio tracks with ffprobe -i recording.wtv. Look for entries such as Stream #0:1: Audio.
3. Extract the first audio stream and encode it as FLAC:

ffmpeg -i recording.wtv -map 0:a:0 -c:a flac recording.flac

-map 0:a:0 selects the first audio stream, and -c:a flac uses lossless FLAC encoding. Replace recording.wtv with the actual filename. To select a different audio stream, change the final index, for example -map 0:a:1.

To retain common broadcast metadata when FFmpeg can read it, add -map_metadata 0:

ffmpeg -i recording.wtv -map 0:a:0 -map_metadata 0 -c:a flac recording.flac

FFmpeg normally chooses a suitable FLAC compression level. Compression changes file size and encoding speed, not decoded audio quality; -compression_level 8 can reduce the output size at the cost of more encoding time:

ffmpeg -i recording.wtv -map 0:a:0 -c:a flac -compression_level 8 recording.flac

Using the online converter

You can convert the file on 101convert.com for free without installing software: select the WTV file, choose FLAC as the output format, start the conversion, and download the resulting file. Uploading a recording may expose its contents to the service, and DRM-protected WTV files may still fail.

Quality and compatibility limitations

FLAC encoding is lossless only from the decoded source. If the WTV audio is AAC or AC-3, converting it to FLAC does not restore information already removed by that lossy codec; it preserves the decoded result in a larger, lossless container.

Check the output with ffprobe recording.flac or a compatible media player. If the WTV contains multiple language tracks or commentary, convert each track separately by changing the -map selection. A failed conversion can result from DRM, an incomplete recording, unsupported stream data, or a damaged file.