3FR to HEVC Converter

Convert 3FR to HEVC

A .3fr is Hasselblad's camera raw — one very large medium-format still, 16 bits per channel, unrendered. HEVC (H.265) is a video codec. So this conversion renders the photograph and encodes it as a short, silent clip that holds a single frame for as long as you specify. It is a deliberately narrow pairing: choose it when a video pipeline ingests H.265 specifically. If you want a viewable picture, 3FR to JPG is the answer, and if you want a clip that plays on phones, browsers and TVs, 3FR to MP4 is safer, because H.265 playback depends on the viewer's hardware and licensing in a way H.264 does not.

3FR Format at a Glance

What the .hevc File We Write Actually Is

How to Convert 3FR to HEVC

1. Upload Your 3FR File: Drag and drop the .3fr onto the page or click "Add Files". Hasselblad raws are large, so the wait is the upload rather than the encode.
2. Set Image Duration: Under Advanced Options, Duration decides how long the still is held — it starts at "5 seconds per frame" and ranges from a fraction of a second up to 10 seconds.
3. Check Quality Preset and Resolution: Video Codec is already H.265 for this output, and Quality Preset starts on "Very High (Recommended)" for a near-transparent encode. Video resolution defaults to "Keep original", so pick a "Fixed Resolutions" value such as 1920 x 1080 unless you genuinely need the full medium-format frame in a video file.
4. Convert and Download: Click convert and save the .hevc. It uploads over an encrypted connection, is encoded on our servers, and is deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the HEVC clip move or have sound, or is it just my photo held on screen?

Just the photo, held, in silence. A 3FR is a single capture, so a one-file conversion produces a freeze-frame shown for the Duration you set — no motion, no pan. For still-image sources the audio codec control is hidden rather than set to "none", so the muxer writes a video-only file; there is nothing in one photograph to fill a soundtrack. To get a sequence, leave Merge strategy on "Merge images" and upload several raws, and each becomes one held frame in upload order.

Is the .hevc file a raw H.265 bitstream?

No, and that distinction matters. Encoders often emit bare elementary streams named .hevc or .265, which have no container, no timing metadata and no index — most players refuse them outright. What this converter writes is a Matroska container carrying an H.265 track, given a .hevc name. Container-aware players such as VLC, mpv and ffplay open it as-is; anything that decides from the extension may not. Renaming the file to .mkv changes nothing inside it and fixes most of those refusals.

Will the .hevc file play everywhere?

No — H.265 playback is conditional in a way H.264 is not. Beyond the extension question, native support is uneven: Safari has decoded HEVC since version 13, Chrome and Edge added it in 107 but only where the operating system and GPU expose an H.265 decoder, and Firefox reached partial support in 137. That is roughly 92% of browsers on paper and less in practice on older hardware. When compatibility is the priority, use 3FR to MP4 for H.264, or run the result through HEVC to MP4 — which re-encodes, rather than repackaging.

Is HEVC the same thing as H.265?

Yes. HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) and H.265 are two names for one standard, developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding — ITU-T's VCEG working with ISO/IEC's MPEG. ITU-T approved it in April 2013 and published it that June, with ISO/IEC following in November. Its headline claim is 25-50% better compression than H.264 at the same visual quality. Vendors use whichever name suits their audience: Apple tends to say HEVC, broadcast and encoding tools tend to say H.265, and our Video Codec menu lists both spellings.

Why is HEVC so patchily supported when it is technically better than H.264?

Licensing. HEVC is covered by several patent pools administered by different organisations, each with its own royalty structure, so anyone shipping a decoder faces a fragmented and expensive rights picture. That is why some browsers declined to implement it directly and lean on the operating system's decoder instead, and it is the reason the Alliance for Open Media built AV1 as a royalty-free alternative. If licensing is a concern for your pipeline, 3FR to AV1 produces a comparable file without it.

Will I lose quality going from a 100-megapixel Hasselblad raw to HEVC?

Substantially, and it is inherent to the conversion rather than a fault in the tool. A 3FR holds 16-bit sensor data that must be demosaiced to become viewable, and that render bakes in white balance, exposure and tone — the raw latitude is gone. The encode then works in 8-bit 4:2:0 (or 10-bit in Main 10), which throws away most of the colour resolution a medium-format file was carrying. Keep the .3fr as the master; the HEVC is a delivery file for one specific destination.

Should I use a fixed resolution or keep the original frame size?

Pick a fixed resolution in almost every case. "Keep original" hands the encoder a frame far larger than any video profile expects, which produces a big file that some players and hardware decoders will not accept — HEVC levels cap resolution and bitrate, and consumer decoders implement a limited set. A "Fixed Resolutions" value such as 1920 x 1080 or 3840 x 2160 keeps you inside what real playback hardware handles. Note that a 4:3 medium-format frame in a 16:9 output gets letterbox bars, filled with the Background Color, which defaults to White.

What happens to my 3FR file after conversion?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours later — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public. Since a single Hasselblad capture can pass 150 MB, the upload is usually the slow part; that transfer, not the encoding, is what determines how long the job feels.