3GPP to WTV Converter

3GPP to WTV — Read This First

WTV is Windows Recorded TV Show, Microsoft's proprietary container for material captured by Windows Media Center. It arrived with the Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 for Vista, shipped in every Media Center edition of Windows 7, and replaced the older ASF-based DVR-MS format that Windows XP Media Center Edition used. Then it stopped: Windows Media Center is not included in Windows 10 and is removed when you upgrade, and nothing since has written or read WTV out of the box.

That makes this a narrow conversion. There is one situation where it is right — you still run a Windows 7 or 8.1 Media Center machine and you want an old phone recording to appear in its Recorded TV library alongside your tuner captures. For any other goal, including "I just want this .3gpp to play", 3GPP to MP4 is the answer.

If you arrived from the other direction and actually have a WTV recording you want to open elsewhere, you want WTV to MP4. That is the way this traffic almost always flows.

How to Convert 3GPP to WTV

1. Upload Your 3GPP File: Drag the .3gpp onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse. Several files can be queued and all run with the same settings.
2. Pick a File Compression Mode: File Compression opens on Quality Preset at Very High (Recommended). The alternatives are Specific file size with an Auto Scale toggle, Constant Bitrate, Variable Bitrate, Constant Quality and Constraint Quality; Constant Quality is a genuine CRF here, on a 16-51 scale where lower means better.
3. Set Video resolution and Trim (Optional): Video resolution opens on Keep original, with Preset Resolutions, Resolution Percentage, Width, Height and Width x Height alongside. Trim offers Unchanged or a Time Range, taking a Start time and a Duration in seconds or as HH:MM:SS.sss.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .wtv. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, re-encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: There Are No Codec Menus, and Here Is What You Get Instead

Open Advanced Options on this page and you will find a Video Codec heading and an Audio Codec heading with nothing under either of them. That is not a rendering fault. Every codec entry in the option set carries an allow-list of output formats it may be offered for, and WTV appears on none of those lists — so both groups render as empty headings and the encoder is decided for you.

What the conversion actually produces is worth stating plainly, because it is easy to assume WTV means MPEG-2:

• Video is encoded as H.264. WTV is grouped with the H.264 targets in the option configuration, and the conversion pipeline also falls back to H.264 for any container it has no specific default for. Either path arrives at the same place.
• Audio is encoded as AC-3. No audio codec is specified for WTV anywhere in the pipeline, so the muxer's own default applies — and the WTV muxer's default audio codec is AC-3. That is convenient rather than accidental: AC-3 is one of the two audio formats Media Center recordings normally carry, the other being MPEG-1 Layer II.
• Real Media Center recordings are usually MPEG-2 video. So the file you produce here is a valid WTV container holding a more modern video codec than a tuner capture would have used. Windows 7 Media Center could decode H.264 from ATSC broadcasts, but if your specific setup insists on MPEG-2, this page cannot produce it — there is no codec control to change.

The other half of the story is your source. 3GPP recordings are mobile-profile video — commonly 176 x 144, 320 x 240 or 352 x 288, often H.263 at a few hundred kilobits per second. A Media Center library is displayed on a television. Setting Video resolution to 720p will make the file bigger without making the picture better, because every added pixel is interpolated from a frame the handset never captured at that detail. Leave it on Keep original and let the television scale, which is what it does with every other source anyway.

3GPP and WTV at a Glance

What to Convert Your 3GPP to Instead

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The WTV will not open on Windows 10 or 11." Expected — Media Center is not part of Windows 10 or 11, so there is no built-in WTV support. VLC, mpv and Kodi will usually open the file anyway because they read the container directly.
• "There is no codec dropdown." Correct. WTV is not on any codec's allow-list in the option set, so both codec groups render empty. You steer the result through Quality Preset and the File Compression modes instead.
• "My Media Center shows the file but will not play it." Your setup may want MPEG-2 video, which this page cannot produce. There is no way to change the codec here; a desktop tool with an explicit MPEG-2 encoder is the fallback.
• "The file is bigger than my 3GPP." Almost certainly a raised resolution, or a generous preset on a source with very little detail to preserve. Return Video resolution to Keep original and try Specific file size.
• "The picture is soft." A mobile-profile source has very little detail to begin with and this is a second lossy generation on top. Nothing on the page can add detail back.
• "Renaming it to .mp4 does not help." WTV is Microsoft's own container, not an MP4 under a different name. Renaming changes nothing; convert instead.

When This Doesn't Work

If you are not feeding a genuine Windows 7 or 8.1 Media Center machine, this is the wrong target — you are converting a superseded mobile format into a discontinued Microsoft one, and neither end has a future. Convert to 3GPP to MP4 for something that plays everywhere, or 3GPP to MKV for a flexible archive container. And if you inherited a .wtv recording and want it somewhere usable, WTV to MP4 is the conversion you were probably looking for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is there no Video Codec or Audio Codec option on this page?

Because no codec in the option set lists WTV among the output formats it may be used with. Each codec entry — H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VP9 and the rest — carries an allow-list of containers, and WTV is on none of them, so both groups render as headings with no selectable entries and the encoder is decided server-side. Fidelity is steered through the Quality Preset and the File Compression modes instead.

What codecs does the file actually end up containing?

H.264 video and AC-3 audio. WTV is grouped with the H.264 targets in the configuration, and the pipeline also defaults to H.264 for containers it has no specific entry for, so the video track is H.264 either way. No audio codec is specified for WTV at all, which means the WTV muxer's own default applies — and that default is AC-3, one of the two audio formats Media Center recordings normally use.

Will the WTV play on Windows 10 or Windows 11?

Not natively. Microsoft's own guidance is that Windows Media Center is not included in Windows 10 and is removed when you upgrade, and nothing has replaced it since — so there is no built-in WTV playback on Windows 10 or 11. VLC, Kodi and mpv will typically open the file because they read the container directly rather than relying on the operating system. If forward compatibility matters at all, produce an MP4 instead.

Real Media Center recordings are MPEG-2 — can I get MPEG-2 out of this page?

No. There is no codec control here, and the encoder that runs writes H.264. Windows 7 Media Center could decode H.264 — that is how it handled ATSC broadcast recordings — so an H.264 WTV is usually fine for the Recorded TV library. But if your particular decoder chain insists on MPEG-2, this conversion cannot produce it and you will need a desktop tool with an explicit MPEG-2 encoder.

What did WTV replace, and how is it different from DVR-MS?

WTV succeeded DVR-MS (.dvr-ms), the ASF-based recorded-TV format used by Windows XP Media Center Edition and Vista's original Media Center. WTV appeared with the Media Center TV Pack 2008 for Vista and became standard in Windows 7 Media Center; Windows 7 could also convert existing DVR-MS recordings into it. Both are Microsoft-only containers with no successor — once Media Center was cut from Windows 10, the format line simply ended.

Should I raise the resolution so it looks better on the TV?

No. A 3GPP recording is typically 176 x 144, 320 x 240 or 352 x 288, and setting Preset Resolutions to 720p or 1080p interpolates every pixel above that — a much larger file holding the same soft picture. Leave Video resolution on Keep original; a television scales small sources to its panel anyway, and it does so at playback time without you paying for the extra bytes on disk.

Can I convert just part of a long recording?

Yes. Switch Trim from Unchanged to Time Range and enter a Start time and a Duration, in seconds or as HH:MM:SS.sss; only that window is decoded and re-encoded, which is also the fastest way to test your settings. To break one file into several separate clips instead, run it through Video Cutter first and convert each piece here.

Does the AMR audio in my 3GPP survive?

Not as AMR. Handset recordings almost always carry AMR narrowband speech at 8 kHz, and WTV holds no such codec, so the track is decoded and re-encoded to AC-3. Nothing is gained in quality by that — an 8 kHz speech recording contains no content above 4 kHz whatever you re-encode it into — but it is what the container requires. The video is always re-encoded too, even if the source already held H.264.

How are my files handled and how long are they kept?

Your file is uploaded over an encrypted (TLS) connection, decoded and re-encoded on our servers — never in public view — and both the upload and the resulting .wtv are deleted automatically after a few hours. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and your files are never shared or made public, so download the result before that window passes.