3FR to MTS Converter

Converting a Hasselblad 3FR to MTS: What This Tutorial Covers

A .3fr is Hasselblad's 3F RAW — undeveloped medium-format sensor data that only Phocus and a few RAW-aware editors open. An .mts is the file a camcorder writes when it records AVCHD: an MPEG transport stream carrying H.264 video, the format Sony and Panasonic introduced in 2006. Nothing about those two descriptions suggests a natural conversion, and this tutorial is honest about that. What the tool does is render the RAW into one video-sized frame and hold that frame on screen for a duration you choose, inside a transport stream — a silent, motionless clip. The narrow case where that is genuinely useful is dropping a studio still, slate, or title card into an AVCHD-era timeline that ingests .mts footage. If you simply want to see the photograph, 3FR to JPG is the page you want.

How to Convert 3FR to MTS

1. Upload Your 3FR File: Drag and drop the .3fr onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Several captures can be queued, though medium-format RAW files are big — Hasselblad puts an average 100 MP capture at 206 MB.
2. Choose the Duration and Merge Strategy: "Image Duration" sets how long the rendered frame is held, from a single frame at 60 fps up to 10 seconds per frame. "Merge strategy" decides whether several uploads become one combined clip ("Merge images") or one .mts each ("Video per image").
3. Check Resolution, Quality Preset, and Background Colour: "Video resolution" offers "Keep original", "Preset Resolutions", "Fixed Resolutions", or explicit width and height; "Quality Preset" sits on "Very High (Recommended)"; "Background Color" starts on White and fills the letterbox or pillarbox bars when the frame's aspect ratio does not match the video's.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the silent .mts. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: The Settings That Decide the Result

Two of these controls quietly discard the thing a Hasselblad file is prized for, so it is worth understanding what each one costs before you convert:

• Resolution is a deliberate, massive downscale. A current Hasselblad back records 11656 × 8742 pixels — roughly 100 megapixels — while AVCHD tops out at 1920 × 1080. Even "Keep original" produces a video-sized frame rather than a poster-sized one, and any preset scales the render to fit. Detail that does not fit the chosen frame is gone. If pixels are the point, stop here and use 3FR to TIFF.
• The render bakes in a look. Transport-stream video has no concept of undeveloped sensor data, so the converter demosaics the 3FR and fixes white balance, exposure, and tone before encoding. What lands inside the .mts is a finished video frame. If the grade matters, set it in Phocus on the original file, export, and convert that.
• Duration controls how long the still sits on the timeline. Short values suit a flash frame or a freeze; several seconds suit a slate or title card. Combined with "Merge images", a series of captures becomes a back-to-back sequence, each held for the duration you set.
• Background Colour only paints the bars. A 4:3-ish medium-format frame does not fill a 16:9 video frame, and the colour you pick fills the empty edges. It is a letterbox setting, not a fill for anything inside the picture.

AVCHD and MTS at a Glance

What Survives the Conversion, and What Doesn't

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The clip is completely silent." Expected. A still image has no audio track, so there is nothing to encode — even though AVCHD itself supports AC-3 and linear PCM. Add narration or music on the editing timeline after import.
• "The photo doesn't move." Also by design: one rendered frame is held for the duration you chose. Pans, zooms, and transitions are the editor's job, not the converter's.
• "There are white bars down the sides." A medium-format frame is much squarer than 16:9, so the encoder pads it. Change "Background Color", or pick a "Fixed Resolutions" value closer to the capture's aspect ratio.
• "It looks soft compared with the RAW." Squeezing a 100 MP capture into a 1080-line frame throws away well over 95% of the pixels. That is arithmetic, not a quality setting — keep the still as 3FR to TIFF if resolution matters.
• "My camcorder or set-top player will not see the file." What you download is a single transport stream, not a camera volume. AVCHD media carries a directory structure (AVCHD inside PRIVATE, or BDMV on disc-based camcorders) that a copied .mts does not recreate.
• "My 3FR will not load." It may come from a body newer than the RAW decoder recognises, or be a truncated copy. Re-save it to DNG or TIFF in Phocus and convert that, or re-copy from the card.

When This Doesn't Work

MTS is a capture format, not a delivery format — it exists because camcorders write it, and its whole ecosystem is AVCHD-era editing and disc authoring. If your reason for being here is anything other than "an existing .mts-based project needs this still", pick a different target: 3FR to JPG for a viewable picture, 3FR to TIFF for a print master, or 3FR to MP4 for the same H.264 frame in a container that plays on phones, browsers, and TVs without ceremony. If you want stills-as-video from something other than Hasselblad RAW, Image to MTS accepts ordinary image formats. And no converter can rescue a genuinely corrupt .3fr — go back to the card or the backup.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why would anyone convert a 3FR photo to MTS instead of MP4?

Only for an AVCHD-era pipeline. If a project lives in an older editor or a disc-authoring tool that expects .mts transport-stream footage, a still delivered as .mts drops into that timeline without a re-wrap or a conform step. For every other purpose 3FR to MP4 carries the same H.264 picture in a smaller, far more portable file. And if the goal is to look at the photograph rather than to edit video, neither is right — render 3FR to JPG.

My 3FR is from a 100-megapixel back. What resolution does the MTS end up?

Far lower, unavoidably. AVCHD's specification caps out at 1920 × 1080, so a capture recorded at 11656 × 8742 is scaled down to roughly a fiftieth of its pixel count. "Keep original" does not change that arithmetic — it still produces a video frame. Treat the clip as a delivery artefact for a specific timeline and keep the full-resolution still separately, as 3FR to TIFF or a Phocus export.

Does the clip animate the photo, or include any sound?

Neither. One frame is rendered and held for the duration you set, so playback is a freeze frame with no movement. It is silent too — a photograph has no audio to encode, so the output carries video only, even though the AVCHD specification permits Dolby AC-3 and linear PCM. Add motion and audio on the editing timeline after import.

What happens to the RAW editing latitude?

It is spent at the render step. A 3FR keeps exposure, white balance, and highlight recovery adjustable because the sensor data is still undeveloped; encoding video requires a finished 8-bit frame, so the converter demosaics and commits to a development. Grade in Phocus first if the look is important, and always keep the original .3fr — it is the only version that can be reinterpreted later.

Which codec is inside the file, and will Premiere or Resolve import it?

The picture is H.264 inside an MPEG transport stream, which is what AVCHD means, and both Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve ingest that natively — as does VLC and current Windows Media Player. If you plan to change "Video Codec" in Advanced Options, keep it on an H.264 selection: a transport stream carrying something else may still play in VLC while confusing an AVCHD-specific tool.

Can I copy the .mts back onto an SD card and play it on the camcorder?

No. AVCHD media is a directory structure, not a loose file — memory cards and drives nest an AVCHD folder inside PRIVATE, and disc-based camcorders put BDMV at the root, with index and clip-information files alongside the streams. A single .mts dropped onto a card has none of that scaffolding, so a set-top or camera-side player will usually not list it. Software players and editors, which read the stream directly, have no problem with it.

Can I turn several 3FR captures into one sequence?

Yes. Upload them together and set "Merge strategy" to "Merge images"; each still is held for the "Image Duration" you chose and they play back to back in one .mts. Choose "Video per image" instead and you get one clip per capture. Note that this is a hard-cut sequence, not a cross-faded slideshow — there are no transitions, and there is no audio bed.

How are my files handled, and how large a 3FR can I send?

Your capture is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and wrapped into a transport stream on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public. We leave "Quality Preset" on "Very High (Recommended)" so the single frame is not further degraded after the downscale it has already taken. In practice upload time is the constraint rather than anything at the encode stage: at Hasselblad's stated 206 MB average for a 100 MP 3FR, sending the file dominates the job.