Free online WTV to VCD converter

Legacy standalone VCD players and some older authoring workflows require Video CD-compliant MPEG-1 rather than a Windows Media Center recording. Converting a WTV recording also makes it easier to share or archive on a disc, although VCD capacity and resolution are limited.

What the WTV format is

WTV is the Windows Recorded TV container used by Windows Media Center, mainly on Windows Vista and later. It stores recorded television programs with video, audio, metadata, subtitles, and sometimes broadcast copy-protection information. Files commonly have the .wtv extension and are created when Media Center records a scheduled or manually started broadcast.

WTV is a container, not a single video codec. Recordings may contain MPEG-2 or H.264 video and can use different audio formats, so a target format must be selected during conversion.

What the VCD format is

Video CD is a disc format designed for compatible standalone VCD and some DVD players. Its video uses MPEG-1 at approximately 1,150 kbit/s, with MPEG-1 Layer II audio at 224 kbit/s and 44.1 kHz sampling. Standard picture sizes are 352×288 at 25 fps for PAL and 352×240 at approximately 29.97 fps for NTSC.

A VCD normally holds about 74 minutes on a 74-minute CD-R or 80 minutes on an 80-minute CD-R. The MPEG file alone is not a complete VCD: authoring software must create the VCD disc image and its required filesystem structure.

How to actually convert WTV to VCD

Using FFmpeg and vcdimager

FFmpeg can decode many unprotected WTV recordings and create a VCD-compliant MPEG file. Install FFmpeg and vcdimager from packages appropriate to your operating system, then identify whether the recording should use PAL or NTSC.

1. For a PAL disc, convert the recording with:

ffmpeg -i recording.wtv -target pal-vcd recording.mpg

For NTSC, use:

ffmpeg -i recording.wtv -target ntsc-vcd recording.mpg

The FFmpeg VCD target selects MPEG-1 video, the required frame size and frame rate, 44.1 kHz stereo audio, VCD bitrates, and suitable MPEG program-stream settings. If the source aspect ratio needs explicit handling, add a scale-and-pad filter before the target settings, for example:

ffmpeg -i recording.wtv -vf "scale=352:288:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,pad=352:288:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2" -target pal-vcd recording.mpg

2. Check that the resulting MPEG fits the disc duration and is accepted by a media player. Author it as a VCD image with vcdimager:

vcdimager --type vcd2 --video-type pal --bin-file disc.bin --cue-file disc.cue recording.mpg

Use --video-type ntsc instead for an NTSC conversion. The command creates a BIN image and CUE sheet; burn the CUE sheet as an image with a disc-burning application or with a compatible command-line burner such as cdrdao write disc.cue. Do not burn recording.mpg as an ordinary data file, because most VCD players will not recognize that disc.

Using the online converter

You can also use the free converter on 101convert.com without installing software. If it produces a standard MPEG file rather than a BIN/CUE image, run that file through a VCD authoring tool such as vcdimager before burning.

Quality, compatibility, and limitations

VCD conversion is lossy. High-definition or digital-TV WTV footage is reduced to 352-pixel-wide MPEG-1 video, and motion may look blocky or less sharp than the source. Re-encoding cannot restore detail already lost in the WTV recording.

PAL and NTSC must match the television standard supported by the player and display. A recording longer than the CD's capacity must be split or written to multiple discs; reducing the bitrate below the VCD specification can increase playing time but may make the disc incompatible.

Some WTV files contain DRM-protected broadcasts or codecs that the installed FFmpeg build cannot decode. A conversion failure in that case is a protection or codec limitation, not a filename-extension problem. Protected recordings generally cannot be converted unless the recording software provides an authorized export method.