WMV to FLAC converter
Pull the sound out of your WMV and keep it as a FLAC, leaving the picture behind. FLAC keeps every detail of the original recording while taking around half the space of a WAV, and it stores artwork and track information properly. The practical difference is that the result opens anywhere, which WMV files do not. Your file never leaves your computer.
How to convert WMV to FLAC
- 1 Drop your WMV .wmv file onto the page, or click to browse for it.
- 2 Choose the sound quality, or lift the existing track out untouched where that is possible.
- 3 Convert. The work happens on your own machine, so how long it takes depends on your computer and the file.
- 4 Download the FLAC, or add more files and do the whole set in one go.
Why convert WMV to FLAC
- A WMV will not open in a browser, so anything going onto a web page, into a document or into a message has to become a FLAC first.
- You only want the sound: a lecture, an interview, a podcast that was filmed, or a track to listen to with the screen off.
- You want a copy that will not get any worse each time you edit and save it, and FLAC gives you that.
- Identical to the recording at roughly half the size of a WAV.
- Fast decoding and good tagging with embedded artwork.
WMV compared with FLAC
How the two formats differ on the things that decide whether a conversion is worth making.
| Property | WMV | FLAC |
|---|---|---|
| File extension | .wmv | .flac |
| Compression | Lossy | Lossless |
| Typical file size | Smaller | Larger |
| Browser support | No browser support | All current browsers |
| Introduced | 1999 | 2001 |
| Developed by | Microsoft | Xiph.Org Foundation |
| Standard | Proprietary | Open |
Quality and what changes
Whether anything is lost depends on the codec. If the track already matches the target, it can be copied out untouched and the audio is bit for bit what was in the WMV. Choosing a different codec means decoding and re-encoding, which is a second generation of lossy compression on top of whatever the video already applied. Encoding at 192 kbps or above keeps that second generation inaudible for most material.
- WMV files can be read here but not created, so conversions run one way only.
- Files protected with DRM cannot be decoded and will fail rather than convert.
- One FLAC limitation to keep in mind: wasted on speech and on recordings that were never good to begin with.
Questions about WMV to FLAC
Does converting WMV to FLAC improve the quality?
No. FLAC preserves what it is given perfectly, including the compression artefacts already present in the WMV. It stops further loss from happening, which is worth doing before editing, but it cannot recover detail that was discarded.
Why is my FLAC bigger than the WMV?
Because WMV was discarding data and FLAC is not. A lossless format has to write out every pixel it is handed, artefacts included, so growing several times over is normal and does not mean anything went wrong.
Does extracting the audio re-encode it?
Only when the target codec differs from the one in the WMV. Where they match, the track is copied and the result is identical to the audio inside the video. Converting to a different codec means one extra generation of lossy compression.
Is my WMV file uploaded anywhere?
No. The whole thing runs inside the browser tab you already have open. Your WMV is read straight from your own disk, converted on your machine and handed back as a FLAC. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored and there is no account.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no server-side limit because no server sees the file. The real ceiling is your device memory, since the input and the output both have to fit in the tab. A few hundred megabytes is usually fine on a desktop machine and considerably less on a phone.
Can I convert several WMV files at once?
Yes. Add as many as you like and they are processed one after another, then offered as separate FLAC downloads or as a single ZIP. Speed depends on your own processor rather than on a queue.
Does the converter work offline?
Yes, after the page has loaded once. The engine is cached by the browser, so you can disconnect, reload and keep converting. That falls out of doing the work locally rather than being a separate mode you switch on.