What Is a WVX File?

Windows Media Player uses a WVX file as a playlist to store references to other media files

By

Tim Fisher

Updated on May 15, 2023

File Types

What to Know

A WVX file is a Windows Media Video Redirector file.
Open one with Windows Media Player, VLC, or GOM Player.

This article explains what a WVX file is and how to open one on your computer.

What Is a WVX File?

A file with the WVX file extension is a Windows Media Video Redirector file. Microsoft also refers to this format as a Windows Media metafile playlist. It functions as a shortcut, so it references WMA, WMV, WAX, and other Windows Media files.

WVX files are used to store the location of media files. When opened in a compatible program, the referenced files will start to play just as if you'd manually queued them yourself.

This file format is similar to other playlist file formats like ones that use the M3U8, M3U, XSPF, and PLS file extensions.

How to Open a WVX File

WVX files can be opened with Windows Media Player, VLC, and GOM Player.

Since these are just plain text files, you can open one in a program like Notepad or some other text editor to add additional references. This is explained a bit more below.

WVX File Example

You can build your own WVX file by imitating the format below and then saving the file with the .WVX extension. You can do this in any text editor.

In our example, there are references to two online MP3 files. The WVX can point to additional files in the same format, so you can just copy one of the ENTRY lines to add some other references.

<ASX version="3">
<ENTRY>
<ref href="http://download.example.com/example1.mp3"/>
</ENTRY>
<ENTRY>
<ref href="http://download.example.com/example2.mp3"/>
</ENTRY>
</ASX>

These links aren't valid, so this particular file won't work in any program you open it in.

How to Convert a WVX File

Since it's really just a plain text file, you can't actually convert the WVX file to anything else but text-based formats, like playlist formats. VLC might be able to save one to playlist file formats like M3U8, M3U, and XSPF, and to HTML.

This means you can't convert WVX files to MP4, AVI, WMV, MP3, etc. To convert the actual media files, you have to run those individual files through a file converter program.

Still Can't Open the File?

You're probably misreading the file extension. Some files look a lot like .WVX files, even though they're in an entirely different format. If you try to open an unsupported format in one of the openers mentioned above, you'll likely get an error.

For example, WYZ files could easily be misread as WVX files, even though they're really used with the WYZTracker program. The two formats are unrelated and therefore unsupported in the respective programs used to open them.

The same idea is true behind other similarly spelled file extensions, like CVX and VWX, the latter of which is used for Vectorworks design files.

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