Turning a Movie Maker project into an MP4 without Movie Maker

A .wlmp file is a list of instructions, not a video. It names every photo, clip and song the movie used, where each one sat on the PC that made it, and what to do with it: how long a photo stays up, where a clip is trimmed, which transition comes next, what the titles say. To get an MP4 out of it, something has to follow those instructions with the real files in hand.

That is why the "WLMP to MP4" upload sites never work. They receive a few kilobytes of text with no pictures in it. Whatever route you take, the first job is the same: find the media.

Step one: gather the files it points to

Make a copy of the .wlmp and open the copy in Notepad (on a Mac, TextEdit). Each MediaItem line has a filePath="..." with the full old path, like C:\Users\Ana\Pictures\Lake\IMG_0412.JPG. Those are the files you need.

On Windows, PowerShell can list them and look for each one by name under a folder or drive. Change the two paths at the top and paste it in:

$project = "C:\Users\Ana\Desktop\family.wlmp"
$search  = "D:\"
$paths = Select-String -Path $project -Pattern 'filePath="([^"]+)"' -AllMatches |
  ForEach-Object { $_.Matches } | ForEach-Object { $_.Groups[1].Value }
foreach ($p in $paths) {
  $name = Split-Path $p -Leaf
  $hit = Get-ChildItem $search -Recurse -File -Filter $name -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
    Select-Object -First 1
  if ($hit) { "found    $($hit.FullName)" } else { "missing  $name" }
}

It only reads, so it is safe to run. I tried it on a test project with one of its photos in an unrelated folder, and it found that one and listed the other five as missing. A name with an ampersand in it is stored as & in the file, so search for that one by hand.

Copy everything it finds into one folder. If some files are gone for good, recovering the photos and music lists the places they tend to turn up.

In the browser, with Slideback

This is the route I built, so take it with that in mind. Open the WLMP to MP4 page in Chrome or Edge on any computer, drop the .wlmp on it, and choose the folder from step one (a parent folder is fine; folders inside it are searched too). It matches each file by name, so the old drive letters and user names do not matter, and a clip you converted from .MOV to .mp4 still counts. Anything left over can be picked by hand.

Then it plays the whole movie in the page: photos and clips in order with their trims and speed, transitions, pan and zoom, the visual effects, title cards and captions, music, narration and each clip's own sound. If that looks right, Export MP4 writes an H.264 file on your own computer. The check and the preview are free, and the export is US$19 once for as many projects as you like.

What it does not do: it cannot decode clips in WMV, AVI or MOD, so those need converting to MP4 first (HandBrake does it, free). Shatter, stars, page curl and the contemporary slides are drawn as simpler transitions, edge detection, warp and the cinematic overlays are left off, title animations are close but not identical, and the music is not ducked under narration. The page lists the ones that affect your project as soon as it opens, before any payment.

By hand, in another editor

Clipchamp (built into Windows 11), Shotcut, DaVinci Resolve and iMovie can all rebuild the movie, but none of them imports a .wlmp, so you are redoing the edit with the project as your notes. Shotcut's developers said in 2020 that importing Movie Maker projects was not on their roadmap.

The order and timings are all in the file if you read it slowly. The MediaItems list at the top gives each file an id. Further down, Extents holds one entry per clip: an ImageClip shows a photo for duration seconds, a VideoClip plays its file from inTime to outTime (an outTime of 0 means to the end), an AudioClip places music, and a TitleClip holds a title's words. The order is in the ExtentSelector lists, one per track, each a run of ExtentRef ids; BoundPlaceholders, after them, says which list is the main track, the music, the narration and the captions. The the transition on each clip is named, for example CrossfadeTransitionTemplate. For a five-minute family movie that is an evening's work. For an hour-long wedding video it is a lot.

With Movie Maker borrowed back

If you have a Windows PC and don't mind installing old software, Microsoft's own Windows Essentials 2012 installer still exists on the Internet Archive and gives you the real Movie Maker 2012, which saves the project as an MP4 itself. It is the most faithful result, since it is the program that made the project. Getting Movie Maker 2012 back on Windows 11 has the steps and the errors people run into.

If it is an .mswmm, not a .wlmp

Projects from the Movie Maker in Windows XP and Vista end in .mswmm and are a different format inside, but the routes are the same and the WLMP to MP4 page opens them too. The .mswmm page has the details.

Updated 25 October 2026.