MTS to WTV Converter

Convert MTS to WTV Online

WTV is the Windows Recorded TV Show container — the format Windows Media Center wrote when it captured from a TV tuner. It arrived with the Vista TV Pack 2008, replacing the older .dvr-ms, and it went away again when Microsoft discontinued Media Center for Windows 10 in May 2015. That history is the single most important thing to know before converting camcorder footage into it: this is a target with one real audience, which is people still running a Media Center machine on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 Pro. Everyone else is better served by MTS to MP4. If you are in that audience, here is exactly what the conversion gives you.

How to Convert MTS to WTV

1. Upload Your MTS File: Drag and drop the .MTS clips from your camcorder's STREAM folder, or click "Add Files". This page accepts .mts only, and multiple clips convert with the same settings.
2. Choose a File Compression Mode: Quality Preset is what the page opens on, at "Very High (Recommended)". Specific file size, Constant Bitrate, Variable Bitrate, Constant Quality and Constraint Quality are the alternatives if you need to hit a number.
3. Set Video Resolution or Trim (Optional): Video resolution opens on "Keep original"; "Width x Height" pins exact dimensions, while "Preset Resolutions" sets height only and lets width follow the source aspect. Trim takes a start time and a duration.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .wtv. Files upload over an encrypted connection, convert on our servers, and are deleted automatically a few hours later. No sign-up, no watermark.

What You Can and Cannot Control Here

This page has no codec choice. The Video Codec and Audio Codec sections contain no selectable entries for a WTV output, so the codec is decided by configuration rather than by you — the target's own settings specify H.264 for the video. Worth knowing, because it means the usual "pick MPEG-2 for compatibility" advice has nowhere to go on this page.

One more expectation to set: what comes out is a WTV container holding your footage, not a Media Center recording. A genuine tuner capture carries broadcast program-guide information that Media Center attaches at record time; a converted camcorder clip has no such data to carry, so it will appear in a Recorded TV library without the channel, series and episode details a real recording would show.

WTV vs the Targets Most People Actually Want

Frequently Asked Questions

Will a WTV file play on Windows 10 or Windows 11?

Not with anything built in. Microsoft announced in May 2015 that Windows Media Center would be discontinued and removed when upgrading to Windows 10, and nothing replaced it — there is no first-party WTV playback on current Windows. Third-party players such as VLC, Kodi and MPC-HC will generally open the file, but if the machine you are targeting runs Windows 10 or 11 you are converting into a format that gains you nothing. Convert to MP4 instead.

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

Because none of the codec entries are available for a WTV output — both sections are present but have nothing selectable in them, so the codec comes from configuration rather than from you. For this target that configuration specifies H.264. If having explicit codec control matters to your workflow, the MP4, WMV and MPEG-2 pages all expose real codec dropdowns.

What is the difference between WTV and DVR-MS?

DVR-MS was the original Media Center recording format, used through Windows XP Media Center Edition and Vista. WTV replaced it with the Vista TV Pack 2008 release, which switched recordings from .dvr-ms to .wtv. Windows 7's Media Center could read both, so a mixed library was normal; WTV was the format going forward until Media Center itself was retired.

Which versions of Windows shipped Media Center?

Windows 7 was the last release to include it broadly across editions. Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro offered it only as a paid add-on, and Windows 10 removed it entirely. The supporting electronic program guide service was switched from Zap2It to Rovi in July 2015 and shut down completely on 14 January 2020, so even a surviving Media Center install no longer receives listings.

Will my 1080i camcorder footage be deinterlaced for TV-style playback?

No. There is no deinterlacing anywhere in this pipeline, so interlaced AVCHD keeps its field structure and the comb lines on fast motion stay in the frames exactly as recorded. That happens to suit a broadcast-style container, but it is a consequence of how the conversion works rather than a setting you chose — and no option on this page changes it.

Does the conversion re-encode, or does it just re-wrap the stream?

It re-encodes. Every conversion here decodes the source and encodes fresh video; there is no stream-copy path that lifts the H.264 out of the transport stream and drops it into WTV untouched. Keep the original MTS files as your master and treat the WTV as a playback copy, because a second round-trip through the encoder will cost more quality.

Can I upload .m2ts files here?

No. The uploader on this page matches .mts only. The underlying recording is identical — AVCHD camcorders write .MTS to the memory card and the same clip is usually labelled .m2ts after import — so either rename the extension or use the equivalent M2TS page.

I actually have a WTV file I want to open — what should I do?

Convert it the other way. Most WTV traffic is people trying to get out of the format rather than into it, and WTV to MP4 is the page for that: it produces a file that plays on current Windows, phones, browsers and TVs without a Media Center install. If you only need to shorten a recording rather than change its format, the video cutter accepts WTV directly.

How long do you keep my uploaded footage?

Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically a few hours after conversion. Nothing is shared or made public, and there is no sign-up and no watermark. AVCHD clips are large, so upload time is usually the longest part of the job — trim the source first if you only need a section.