Convert WTV to ALAC — Free Online Converter
Convert Windows TV (.wtv) to Apple Lossless Audio Codec (.alac) online for free. Fast, secure video conversion with no watermarks or registration....
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How to Convert
Upload your .wtv file by dragging it into the upload area or clicking to browse.
Choose your output settings. The default settings work great for most files.
Click Convert and download your .m4a file when it's ready.
About WTV to ALAC Conversion
WTV (Windows TV) files were created by Windows Media Center's TV tuner recording feature, capturing over-the-air and cable television broadcasts with MPEG-2 or H.264 video, AC3 or AAC audio, and embedded EPG metadata including program titles, descriptions, channel information, and content ratings. The format's NTFS-like container structure was engineered for real-time recording from TV tuner hardware. ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is Apple's lossless compression format, reducing audio file sizes by 40-60% compared to raw PCM while preserving bit-perfect quality.
Windows Media Center shipped with Windows Vista through Windows 8.1, and was available as an add-on for Windows 10 before being fully discontinued. The millions of WTV recordings created during this era now sit in personal archives, increasingly difficult to access as Windows Media Center fades from supported platforms.
Why Convert WTV to ALAC?
Extracting audio from WTV recordings to ALAC produces losslessly compressed files that play natively on Apple devices — iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and HomePod. This is the ideal path for users migrating their media libraries to the Apple ecosystem, particularly for recordings containing music, concerts, or high-quality audio worth preserving at full fidelity.
ALAC offers approximately 50% compression over uncompressed formats like AIFF or WAV, making it a storage-efficient choice for archiving broadcast audio. Apple Music and iTunes handle ALAC natively, allowing extracted TV audio to integrate seamlessly into existing music libraries.
Common Use Cases
- Archiving concert and music show audio from WTV recordings in Apple's lossless format for iTunes library integration
- Extracting high-fidelity spoken-word content from educational TV recordings for Apple Podcasts-style consumption
- Migrating Windows Media Center audio archives to the Apple ecosystem with zero quality compromise
- Creating lossless audio backups of irreplaceable TV recordings (live events, discontinued shows) in a well-supported format
- Reclaiming disk space from large WTV files while preserving full audio quality in a compressed lossless container
How It Works
FFmpeg demuxes the WTV container, extracts and decodes the audio stream (AC3 or AAC), then encodes the decoded PCM to ALAC within an M4A (MPEG-4 Audio) container. The ALAC encoder compresses losslessly at approximately 50-60% of the raw PCM size. Multi-channel 5.1 AC3 sources are downmixed to stereo by default. The video stream, EPG metadata, and any closed caption data are discarded during extraction.
Quality & Performance
ALAC preserves the full decoded audio quality from the WTV source — the compression is lossless, so no additional quality is lost. The limiting factor is the broadcast source itself: AC3 at 192-384 kbps or AAC at 128-256 kbps. The ALAC output captures whatever fidelity the original broadcast provided, stored in a format that can be decoded to identical PCM samples indefinitely.
Device Compatibility
| Device | WTV | ALAC |
|---|---|---|
| Windows PC | Partial | Partial |
| macOS | Partial | Native |
| iPhone/iPad | Partial | Native |
| Android | Partial | Partial |
| Linux | Partial | Partial |
| Web Browser | No | No |
Recommended Settings by Platform
YouTube
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bitrate: 8-12 Mbps
H.264 recommended for fast processing
Resolution: 1080x1080
Bitrate: 3.5 Mbps
Square or 9:16 for Reels
TikTok
Resolution: 1080x1920
Bitrate: 4 Mbps
9:16 vertical, under 60s ideal
Twitter/X
Resolution: 1280x720
Bitrate: 5 Mbps
Under 140s, 512MB max
Resolution: 960x540
Bitrate: 2 Mbps
16MB limit for standard, 64MB for document
Discord
Resolution: 1280x720
Bitrate: 4 Mbps
8MB free, 50MB Nitro
Tips for Best Results
- 1Use ALAC when your primary playback devices are Apple products — it integrates natively with iTunes, Apple Music, and all Apple hardware
- 2Trim recordings to exclude commercial breaks before conversion to avoid archiving unwanted content
- 3Downmix 5.1 AC3 to stereo for music listening, or preserve multi-channel if you have a surround sound Apple TV setup
- 4Batch-process an entire Windows Media Center recording library to ALAC for a one-time migration to the Apple ecosystem
- 5Tag the output M4A files with program name and recording date to maintain organization after EPG metadata is lost
WTV to ALAC conversion extracts and losslessly archives broadcast audio from Windows Media Center TV recordings, producing Apple-native files that preserve full quality while achieving meaningful compression.