Can Apple play WMV video files?

Typically used on Windows-based computers and viewed with Windows media player, WMV is a popular video format that's easy to come across all over the internet. But every time you try to open a WMV file on an Apple product like MacBook, iPhone, QuickTime, you could find that it commonly ended in failure—an error message pops up in front of you, stating "The movie 'xxxxxx.wmv' can't be opened". See also: How to convert WMV video to MP4 file

The reason behind this is quite simple. WMV is a propriety format from Microsoft and only work with MS propriety codecs that Apple doesn't support. What's worse, Microsoft halted development of Windows Media Player for Mac—the tailor-made version for playback of Windows Media content (.wma and .wmv) in Mac, making things a little bit tricky when it comes to viewing WMV file in Apple platform.

Don't worry, much the same as viewing MKV files in Mac we outlined previously, there are ways to get WMV playable in Apple products. Here's how you can do.

Use a 3rd Party Video Player that Opens WMV

The first solution available from the outset is to use a third-party versatile video player that works in Apple ecosystem and accepts WMV format well. While there are lots of WMV player apps you can download out there for Apple, we suggest VLC media player. It integrates codec packs you need to play an extensive variety of audio and video formats that Apple doesn't support natively, and can also stream video from the web. It's free and works across multi-platform: Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Linux, Apple TV, Ubuntu, Chrome OS, OpenBSD, Syllable, etc.

VLC official website: http://www.videolan.org/

Conversion Option

If you want to do more than just playing WMV movie files on Apple, there's another measure you can take—use a Video Converter program to convert WMV to Apple compatible format such as MP4, MOV, M4V. The tool converts just any video and audio format you can ever imagine and offers you options to select from the pre-defined device profiles. Other nice touches are just like the ability to edit the video files, batch convert a bundle of files at once, extract sound track out of a video, and so on.

The following is a step by step guide to converting WMV files to Apple-approved format using Video Converter on Mac.

Step 1: Import WMV footage

Open up the program, you will be presented with a window. The layout is clear and easy on the eye.

To begin, you can either drag and drop your WMV source files from computer, or use the traditional "Add file" button at the upper left corner of the screen to browse the files and load them.

Step 2: Select output format

Click on the "Profile" drop down menu in the bottom left corner of the screen, then choose an output format from the "General Video" category. In order to play WMV on Apple, you can select from MP4, M4V, or MOV, which is full compatible with Apple products.

The program comes with a library of device presets that're ready to use. If you're converting WMV or any other file for a popular device which happened to be included in the list, you can select it from the list, it should do just fine.

Step 3: Start conversion

Once everything is at place, press the "Convert" button at the bottom right corner of the window and let it do the rest. Just wait until the conversion reaches the end.

In this way, you've converted your WMV videos into a format playable in Apple. Now, you're ready to play converted files on Apple product of your choice.

Bothering to go through the process of converting a video/ song to iOS friendly format and then syncing it to your iPhone or iPad via iTunes? Take a look at a tool named iTransfer. It converts & transfers your media files automatically from computer to the iPhone and other iOS devices. It also works as an iTunes replacement, allowing you to back up data including music tracks from your device back to computer, migrate data between phones, one-click to rebuild iTunes Library, fix ID3 tags, de-duplicate, create new album & playlists, and more.