Free online WTV to WAV converter

Recorded television programs from Windows Media Center are often stored as WTV files, while audio editors and production software commonly accept WAV. Converting extracts the program’s audio into an uncompressed file for editing, playback, or archiving.

What the WTV format is

WTV is the Windows Recorded TV format used by Windows Media Center, mainly in Windows Vista and Windows 7. It stores a television recording in a container that can include video, one or more audio streams, captions, metadata, and broadcast-related information. WTV audio may use codecs such as MPEG-1 Layer II, AC-3, or AAC, depending on the broadcast and recording settings.

You usually encounter WTV files in the recorded-TV directory of an older Windows Media Center installation or after transferring recordings from a Media Center PC.

What the WAV format is

WAV is a RIFF-based audio container commonly used for uncompressed PCM audio. It is accepted by most audio editors, digital audio workstations, media players, and archival workflows.

WAV preserves the decoded audio without the additional lossy compression associated with MP3 or AAC, but its files are much larger. A stereo 48 kHz, 16-bit PCM WAV requires about 10.6 MB per minute; multichannel or 24-bit audio requires more.

How to convert WTV to WAV

Using FFmpeg

FFmpeg can read WTV containers and extract an audio stream. Install a current FFmpeg build, open a terminal in the folder containing the recording, and run:

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

This selects the first audio stream, ignores video, decodes it to 16-bit PCM, and writes output.wav. Replace input.wtv with the actual filename. To select another audio stream, change 0:a:0 to 0:a:1, 0:a:2, and so on.

To retain the source sample rate and channel count, do not add resampling or channel options. For 24-bit PCM output, use -c:a pcm_s24le; confirm that the receiving application supports 24-bit WAV.

Using the online converter

You can convert the file on 101convert.com for free without installing software: choose WTV as the input format, upload the recording, select WAV as the output format, start the conversion, and download the resulting file.

Quality, compatibility, and limitations

Conversion cannot improve the original broadcast audio. If the WTV stream is compressed, FFmpeg decodes it to PCM; the WAV is uncompressed after conversion, but it does not restore information removed during the original broadcast encoding.

WTV recordings protected by Windows Media Center DRM or broadcaster copy restrictions may not decode or convert normally. A WTV file can also contain multiple audio streams, such as alternate languages or a descriptive track, so inspect FFmpeg's input listing and choose the required stream with -map.

WAV files have a practical size limit in some older software, especially near 4 GB. For very long or multichannel recordings, use a modern application or split the output into shorter files.