OGV to WTV Converter

OGV to WTV: What the File You Get Actually Contains

WTV — Windows Recorded TV Show — is the container Windows Media Center wrote when it recorded from a tuner. It arrived with the Media Center TV Pack in 2008, became standard in Windows 7's Media Center, replaced the older ASF-based DVR-MS format, and then stopped: Media Center is not part of Windows 10 or Windows 11, and nothing since has written or read WTV out of the box.

That makes this a narrow conversion with one legitimate use — dropping an Ogg video into the Recorded TV library of a Windows 7 or 8.1 Media Center machine that is still running. This page therefore starts with the measured contents of the output file, because two of the controls you would expect to steer that are not on the page at all.

The Measured Output

We converted a 640 × 360 Theora-and-Vorbis .ogv and probed the result:

Neither codec was chosen by us in the interface, because neither can be. That deserves an explanation rather than a shrug.

Why the video is H.264. WTV is on the allow-list of the option set's H.264 default rule, alongside MP4, MKV, MOV, TS and the rest — so the request that reaches the encoder names H.264 even though no dropdown is shown. This is worth knowing because it is not what the underlying muxer would pick on its own: asked directly, ffmpeg's WTV muxer reports its own default video codec as MPEG-2. Our configuration overrides that.

Why the audio is AC-3. No audio codec is specified for WTV anywhere in the pipeline, so the muxer's own default applies — and the WTV muxer reports its default audio codec as AC-3. That happens to be the right answer: AC-3 is one of the two audio formats a genuine Media Center recording normally carries, the other being MPEG-1 Layer II.

The practical consequence: a file from this page is a valid WTV holding a more modern video codec than a tuner capture would have used. Windows 7 Media Center could decode H.264 — that is how it handled ATSC broadcast recordings — so this is usually fine. If your particular setup insists on MPEG-2, this page cannot produce it, because there is no codec control to change.

How to Convert OGV to WTV

1. Upload Your OGV File: Drag the .ogv onto the page or click "Add Files". Several files can be queued and all run with the same settings.
2. Choose a File Compression mode: File Compression opens on Quality Preset. 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 slider that opens at 23, where lower means better quality and a larger file.
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 starts on Unchanged; switching to the time range gives 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.

Your Source Is Theora, Which Complicates Checking Your Work

An .ogv normally carries Theora video and Vorbis audio, and Theora is no longer decoded by current browsers: Chrome disabled it by default in version 120 and Chromium removed it in 123, Firefox disabled it by default in version 126, and Safari never shipped it. The bitstream itself was frozen back in June 2004; the library is still maintained, with libtheora 1.2.0 released on 29 March 2025, but browser vendors have moved on regardless.

For this conversion that has one concrete effect: you cannot open the source in a browser tab to find the timestamps you want to trim to. Use VLC or mpv, which still play .ogv without complaint, note the times there, and type them into the Trim fields. Our servers decode Theora without difficulty, so a browser refusing the source is not a sign that the conversion will fail.

The other thing to say about a Theora source is that raising the resolution will not help. Ogg video from the era when Theora was in wide use is typically 320 × 240, 640 × 360 or 640 × 480. Setting a 720p preset for a television library interpolates every pixel above that from a frame that never held the detail, producing a much larger file that looks exactly as soft. Leave Video resolution on Keep original and let the television do the scaling — it does that with every source it receives anyway.

Is WTV the Target You Actually Want?

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are the Video Codec and Audio Codec sections empty?

Because no codec entry in the option set lists WTV among the output formats it may be offered for. Each entry — H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VP9 and the rest — carries its own allow-list of containers, and WTV appears on none of them, so both groups render as headings with nothing selectable underneath. The encoder is settled server-side instead, and we measured what it settles on: H.264 video and AC-3 audio. You steer fidelity through Quality Preset and the File Compression modes.

Will the file play on Windows 10 or Windows 11?

Not through anything built into the operating system, because Windows Media Center is not part of Windows 10 or 11 and is removed during an upgrade from an earlier version. There is no successor that reads WTV natively. VLC, Kodi and mpv will generally open the file anyway, since they parse the container directly rather than asking Windows to do it. If forward compatibility matters at all, produce an MP4 instead — this format's line ended when Media Center did.

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 — interestingly, that is our configuration overriding the muxer, which would otherwise default to MPEG-2 on its own. Windows 7 Media Center decoded H.264 for ATSC broadcast recordings, so an H.264 WTV normally plays fine in the Recorded TV library. If your particular decoder chain insists on MPEG-2, you will need a desktop tool with an explicit MPEG-2 encoder.

What did WTV replace, and how does it differ from DVR-MS?

WTV succeeded 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 Windows Media Center TV Pack in 2008 and became standard in Windows 7 Media Center, which could also convert existing DVR-MS recordings into it. Both are Microsoft-only containers with no published specification and no successor — once Media Center was dropped from Windows 10, the format line simply stopped.

What happens to the Vorbis audio in my OGV?

It is decoded and re-encoded to AC-3, because WTV cannot hold a Vorbis stream. We measured the result keeping the source's 48,000 Hz stereo layout, so the sample rate and channel arrangement carry over even though the codec does not. This is a second lossy generation on audio Vorbis had already compressed; nothing about the change to AC-3 improves it, but the container requires it.

Can I convert only part of a long recording?

Yes. Switch Trim from Unchanged to the 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. It is also the fastest way to test a settings combination before committing to a long file. To break one recording into several separate clips instead, run it through the Video Cutter first, which accepts .ogv directly, and convert each piece here.

Why is my WTV so much larger than the OGV it came from?

Usually because the resolution was raised, or because a generous quality setting is being applied to a source with very little detail left in it to preserve. Theora files from the format's heyday are small because they were encoded at low bitrates for slow connections; asking H.264 to reproduce that faithfully at a high quality setting spends bits on artifacts rather than picture. Put Video resolution back to Keep original and try Specific file size if you need a ceiling.

Will renaming the file to .mp4 make it easier to open?

No. WTV is Microsoft's own container format, not an MP4 with a different extension, so renaming changes nothing about the bytes inside and simply produces a file that MP4 parsers reject. This is different from some other legacy targets where the extension is the only thing standing in the way. If you need an MP4, convert to one: OGV to MP4 does it properly.

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

Your .ogv is uploaded over an encrypted connection, decoded and re-encoded on our servers, and both the upload and the resulting .wtv are deleted automatically after a few hours. Files are never shared or made public, there is no watermark and no account is required. Because the work runs server-side, the practical constraint on a long recording is upload size and time rather than anything about your own machine.