Add your WMV file
Drop one or more .wmv files onto the converter above, or browse for them. They load into browser memory only — nothing is uploaded, so there is no size-based pricing and no server queue.
WMV to AU
Pulling the soundtrack out of a .wmv video into .au audio keeps what you can hear and drops the picture entirely. Free, private, and validated — the file never leaves your browser.
Private for supported formats — processed in your browser
Runs on your deviceConvert supported files
Drop WMV files here
Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.
Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.About converting Windows Media video to Sun audio
Pulling the soundtrack out of a .wmv video into .au audio keeps what you can hear and drops the picture entirely. A .wmv file contains Windows Media Video, Microsoft's proprietary codec family, almost always wrapped in an ASF container. The extension was everywhere on Windows XP-era PCs, from downloaded clips to Movie Maker exports, but it has faded as MP4 became universal.
An .au file is the Sun audio format, one of the earliest structured audio files, created for Unix workstations. A minimal header followed by sample data, classically 8 kHz mu-law telephony audio, makes .au about as simple as an audio format can get. For this route the practical draw is so simple that nearly any audio tool can parse it and pCM variants preserve the recording exactly — balanced against essentially obsolete outside legacy systems, which is worth knowing before you commit a large batch.
Why convert WMV to AU?
The usual reason to take .au audio out of a .wmv file is that only the sound matters — a talk, interview, song, or podcast segment. Keeping the video stream would waste storage, and a dedicated audio file is easier to trim, tag, and play. On the source side, effectively abandoned by Microsoft itself; on the target side, the payoff is so simple that nearly any audio tool can parse it, which is exactly what you want for maintaining sound assets in vintage Unix and Java software.
WMV vs AU at a glance
| Aspect | Windows Media video (.wmv) | Sun audio (.au) |
|---|---|---|
| Format type | Container — quality depends on the codecs and settings inside | Lossless — every pixel or sample is preserved exactly |
| How it stores data | aSF container carrying WMV1, WMV2, or WMV3 (VC-1) video, typically with WMA audio | a 24-byte header carries a '.snd' magic number, data offset, encoding type, sample rate, and channel count |
| Strongest at | playing old Movie Maker projects and family archives | maintaining sound assets in vintage Unix and Java software |
| Weak spot | effectively abandoned by Microsoft itself | essentially obsolete outside legacy systems |
| Metadata | aSF content-description attributes hold title, author, copyright, and rating fields, plus extended attributes used by Windows Media Player libraries | an optional annotation field in the header can hold a short text string; no formal tag structure exists |
Pick AU as the output
Select .au in the output menu next to each file. The menu only offers targets this engine can genuinely produce, so if AU is selectable, the route is real and validated.
Convert on your device
Press Convert. A WebAssembly FFmpeg build demuxes the audio track and re-encodes it locally; the video stream is simply discarded.
Verify and download
Each result is signature-checked before the download unlocks, so a failed encode can never masquerade as a valid AU file. Outputs keep the original filename with the .au extension.
WMV to AU questions, answered
Will converting WMV to AU lose quality?
Since wmv is container-oriented and au is lossless-oriented, the conversion preserves the source content exactly as stored; no additional compression pass is applied beyond what .au itself requires.
Is it private to convert WMV files here?
Yes — the .wmv file is processed inside your browser tab and never uploaded. A WebAssembly FFmpeg build demuxes the audio track and re-encodes it locally; the video stream is simply discarded. Close the tab and the file is gone from memory.
Where will the AU file work?
Audio tools such as Audacity, sox, and ffmpeg open .au readily, and Java's sound APIs still accept it. Consumer players, phones, and browsers dropped meaningful support long ago, so conversion to WAV or MP3 is the practical route.
Will the AU file be bigger or smaller than my WMV?
Much smaller — the video stream is usually 80–95% of a .wmv file's weight, and it is discarded entirely. The remaining audio is re-encoded at the bitrate implied by your quality setting.
What happens to the metadata in my WMV file?
This converter strips container metadata deliberately (the FFmpeg command runs with metadata mapping disabled) so exported files do not leak recording details. In the source, aSF content-description attributes hold title, author, copyright, and rating fields, plus extended attributes used by Windows Media Player libraries; none of it is transmitted anywhere because the file never leaves your browser.