MediaWiki to AVIF Converter
FileFlip converts MediaWiki to AVIF entirely inside your browser, using Pandoc, MuPDF and ImageMagick compiled to WebAssembly. The file is never uploaded to a server: it is read off your disk, converted on your own machine, and saved back by the browser. That means no file-size limit, no queue and no account.
How do I convert a MediaWiki file to AVIF?#
- Drop your MediaWiki file onto the converter at the top of this page, or click it to pick one from your computer. You can add as many as you like.
- Leave the target set to AVIF and the conversion starts on its own. FileFlip downloads 79.9 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, then runs Pandoc, MuPDF and ImageMagick on your own machine.
- Save the AVIF file. Your browser writes it straight to your downloads folder, because there was never a server holding it.
Does converting MediaWiki to AVIF lose quality?#
Yes, in the sense that text stops being text. Each MediaWiki page is rendered to pixels and handed to AVIF, so the result looks right and can no longer be selected, searched, or reflowed.
Is it safe to convert MediaWiki files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts MediaWiki files inside the browser tab you already have open, using WebAssembly builds of the same engines a desktop converter would install. Your file is read from your own disk into the page's memory, and no request carrying it is ever made.
You do not have to take that on trust. Open your browser's network panel, run a conversion, and you will see the engine come down and your file go nowhere. There is no upload, no server-side copy, no retention window, and no account tied to what you converted.
How FileFlip works lists every engine, its version and its download size, and shows how to check for yourself that nothing leaves your machine.
What MediaWiki to AVIF actually does to the file#
Converting MediaWiki to AVIF runs on Pandoc, MuPDF and ImageMagick, downloads 79.9 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, renders each page to pixels, keeps page layout, and drops selectable text and transparency.
| Engine | Pandoc, MuPDF and ImageMagick |
|---|---|
| Conversion path | 3 steps: MediaWiki → HTML → PNG → AVIF |
| Downloaded to your browser | 79.9 MB, once, then cached by your browser |
| Quality | Text becomes pixels |
| You get back | One image per page, zipped when the source has several |
| Where it runs | In a background worker, so the page stays responsive |
What survives the conversion
| What is in the file | This conversion | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Selectable text | Dropped | The target format has nowhere to put it. |
| Page layout | Kept | Carried through into the converted file. |
| Transparency | Dropped | The target format has nowhere to put it. |
Worth knowing before you start:
- pages render at twice their point size in opaque RGB, roughly 144 DPI, with no transparency
- reflowable input is laid out on a fixed 595x842pt page at 11pt before anything else happens
- the file passes through HTML on the way, so anything HTML cannot express does not survive
What is a MediaWiki file?#
A MEDIAWIKI file holds wikitext, the plain-text markup that MediaWiki software turns into a wiki page, using double square brackets for links and double curly braces to transclude templates.
Keep content as MediaWiki markup while it lives on Wikipedia or another MediaWiki install, since that's the only place templates and transclusion actually render.
Convert MediaWiki markup to another format when moving an article out of a wiki for good, such as into a document or a static site, and accept that any templates it used will not expand.
What is an AVIF file?#
An AVIF file holds a still image or short animation encoded with the AV1 video codec, packaged inside a HEIF-style container that also carries HDR and wide-colour-gamut data alongside the pixels.
Use AVIF for web images where file size matters most, since it now decodes natively in every major browser and beats JPEG and WebP on compression at the same quality.
Convert AVIF to JPEG or PNG when a file is headed somewhere that still rejects it, such as an older content management system, a print workflow, or an app without AV1 decoding.
MediaWiki to AVIF questions people ask#
What is a .mediawiki file?
A .mediawiki file holds wikitext, the plain-text markup language behind Wikipedia and any other site running MediaWiki software. It's the same syntax you'd see by clicking Edit source on a Wikipedia page: double brackets for links, equals signs for headings, and curly braces for templates.
Can I open a MediaWiki file in Word?
Word doesn't understand MediaWiki markup, so opening the raw file just shows the wikitext characters instead of formatted text. Converting it to a .docx first renders the headings, links, and tables Word does understand, though anything built from a template comes through as whatever text was left in the source rather than the rendered result.
What happens to Wikipedia templates when I convert wikitext?
MediaWiki markup expresses a template as a name inside double curly braces, and the actual content only appears once MediaWiki's own template engine expands it on its servers. A converter working from raw wikitext never sees that expansion, so infoboxes, citation templates, and navigation boxes come through as their unexpanded template calls, or get dropped entirely.
Is MediaWiki markup the same as Markdown?
No. MediaWiki markup and Markdown both use plain-text symbols for formatting, but the syntax differs in almost every detail, from how links are written to how tables and templates work, and MediaWiki markup has no direct Markdown equivalent for transclusion. A file written as one won't render correctly if opened as the other.