MOV to WMV Converter

MOV vs WMV — Which Should You Convert To?

If the file has to open on a Windows PC with nothing installed, convert: Microsoft's own support documentation says "only QuickTime files version 2.0 or earlier can be played in Windows Media Player. Later versions of QuickTime require the proprietary Apple QuickTime Player," which is exactly why a modern iPhone or Mac .mov shows a codec error there. If the file is going into an editor, onto a Mac, or up to a streaming service, stay on MOV — WMV is a 1999-era Microsoft codec family and every conversion into it is a full re-encode.

Side-by-side Comparison

When to Stay on MOV

• You still have editing to do — every trip through WMV throws away detail permanently.
• The destination is a Mac, an iPhone, a browser, or a video platform's upload form.
• The audio is 5.1 or multi-track; WMA Standard collapses it to stereo.
• You need HDR or 10-bit colour preserved. There is no tone-mapping step here, so HDR footage is colour-converted plainly and can look washed out.

When to Convert to WMV

• The file must open on a stock Windows machine, in Windows Media Player, with no codec pack and no QuickTime install.
• You are embedding video in an older PowerPoint deck or a Windows-only kiosk or intranet player.
• You are feeding hardware or software from the Windows Media era that lists .wmv explicitly in its manual.
• You want a single self-contained file for a Windows recipient who will not install anything.

How to Convert MOV to WMV

1. Upload Your MOV File: Drag and drop the .mov onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse. You can queue several clips and convert them with identical settings.
2. Check Video Codec and Audio Codec: Under Advanced Options, Video Codec offers WMV 1 and WMV 2 — WMV 2 (Windows Media Video 8) is the selected default and the better of the two. Audio Codec offers WMA v1 and WMA v2, defaulting to WMA v2.
3. Set Quality Preset or Video Resolution (Optional): Quality Preset opens on "Very High (Recommended)"; under Video resolution you can keep the original, scale by percentage, choose a height preset from 144p to 4320p, or set an explicit width and height. Trim exports just a time range.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .wmv. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

What the Quality Preset Actually Does Here

Windows Media Video 7 and 8 have no CRF-style quality mode, so the preset does not set a quality target — it multiplies the source video's own bitrate and encodes at that rate with 1.5× headroom for busy scenes. That has one consequence worth knowing before you complain about the output size:

Anything above Medium asks the encoder for more bits than the H.264 original used, and because WMV 8 is a far less efficient codec than H.264, the WMV can legitimately come out larger than the MOV it came from. If a specific file size is the goal, use Specific file size or Constant Bitrate instead of chasing the preset.

The two quality-slider modes need one warning. Constant Quality and Constraint Quality show a slider labelled "CRF", but Windows Media Video is driven by an MPEG-style qscale from 1 to 31 where lower is better and the useful range is roughly 2 to 8 — not the x264 scale where 23 is normal. The slider opens at 23, which is near the worst end. In a 10-second 720p test encode, q 2 produced a file roughly ten times the size of q 23, which is the size of the gap you are choosing between. Prefer Constraint Quality, which pairs the slider with a Max bitrate so the output has a ceiling you actually control.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my iPhone or Mac MOV refuse to open in Windows Media Player?

Because of the codec, not the container. Microsoft's file-type documentation limits Windows Media Player's QuickTime support to files "version 2.0 or earlier" — files from modern iPhones, Macs and recent QuickTime versions carry H.264 or HEVC, which the player will not decode on its own. Converting to WMV writes Microsoft's own codec into Microsoft's own container, so the player handles it natively.

Is the output WMV 9 or VC-1?

Neither. This converter writes Windows Media Video 7 ("WMV 1") or Windows Media Video 8 ("WMV 2"), with WMV 2 as the default. WMV 9 — the version standardized as SMPTE 421M / VC-1 in March 2006 — has widely available decoders but no open-source encoder in the toolchain, which is why it is not on the list. WMV 8 plays in Windows Media Player just as natively.

Will converting to WMV make the file smaller?

Often not. WMV 8 predates H.264 by years and needs more bits for the same picture, and the default Very High preset targets 1.32× your source's video bitrate. If you want a smaller file, choose Medium or lower, set an explicit target under Specific file size, or drop the resolution to 720p first. Expecting an automatic size win from a 1999-era codec family is the most common surprise on this conversion.

What happens to a 5.1 surround soundtrack?

It becomes stereo. The audio side of a WMV file here is WMA Standard, which supports at most two discrete channels, so a six-channel MOV is downmixed on the way through. If preserving surround matters more than Windows-native playback, keep the file as MOV to MP4 instead.

My source is interlaced camcorder footage — will the combing be removed?

No. There is no deinterlacing step anywhere in this pipeline, so interlaced fields are encoded exactly as they arrive and the comb artefacts stay baked into the WMV. Deinterlace in a desktop editor before uploading if the footage shows horizontal combing on motion.

Can I convert the WMV back to MOV afterwards?

Yes — WMV to MOV goes the other direction. Understand what you get: the round trip is two lossy re-encodes, so the returned MOV carries WMV-generation artefacts permanently. Keep the original MOV as your master and treat the WMV as a delivery copy.

Does the converter preserve the MOV's aspect ratio on anamorphic footage?

Not reliably. Sources with non-square pixels — DV, some camcorder and DVD-derived footage — have their pixel aspect ratio reset during scaling, so a 16:9 anamorphic clip can come out looking horizontally squeezed. The workaround is to set an explicit Width x Height under Video resolution that matches the display aspect you want, rather than leaving it on Keep original.

How large a MOV can I upload, and what happens to it afterwards?

There is no watermark and no account requirement; the practical constraint is upload time, since the entire video has to reach our servers before encoding starts. A long 4K recording is a large upload — trimming to the section you need first, or using the video cutter beforehand, is much faster. Uploaded files are processed on our servers over an encrypted connection and deleted automatically after a few hours.