Comparing WMV to MP4

[ffmpeghelp]

Hello everyone,

I have a specific program that only recognizes wmv files, and so I need to convert a ton of my mp4 files to wmv. Using ffmpeg, when I set q:v 6, a ten minute video comes out to 232 MB. The original mp4 file is 800 MB for 54 mins, so at this pace, the files will be a little over a gigabyte. Is WMV just that much less efficient when it comes to file compression?

[El Heggunte]

ffmpeg can encode only to wmv1 and wmv2, which compress worse than H.264.
wmv3 and VC-1 can compress better than wmv2, however you cannot use ffmpeg for that.