3FR to Video Converter

How to Convert 3FR to Any Video Format

1. Upload Your 3FR File: Drag and drop the .3fr onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Only Hasselblad RAW is accepted here, and several captures can be queued at once.
2. Pick the Output Container: The "Video File Extension" dropdown carries more than thirty targets — MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, WMV, M4V, MTS, TS, MPEG, OGV, and more. MP4 is the safe choice unless a specific tool demands another extension.
3. Set Duration, Resolution, and Background Colour: "Image Duration" decides how long the still is held, from a single frame at 60 fps up to 10 seconds; "Video resolution" offers "Keep original", presets, or explicit dimensions; "Background Color" starts on White and fills the letterbox bars left by a squarer medium-format frame. "Quality Preset" sits on "Very High (Recommended)".
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the clip. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Popular 3FR Video Conversions

• 3FR to MP4 — the default answer: H.264 in a container that plays on phones, browsers, TVs, and every editor
• 3FR to MOV — for Final Cut and other QuickTime-centric Apple workflows
• 3FR to MKV — Matroska, when you want a permissive container that will hold anything you throw at it
• 3FR to WebM — for embedding directly in a web page without a plugin or a player library
• 3FR to AVI — legacy Windows software and old NLEs that still expect it
• 3FR to WMV — Windows Media pipelines and older PowerPoint embedding
• 3FR to MTS — the AVCHD transport stream an older camcorder-based timeline ingests
• 3FR to GIF — not video at all, but the usual answer when someone wants a small looping image

Why Turn a 3FR Into a Video at All?

Start with what the file is. 3FR is Hasselblad's 3F RAW: undeveloped sensor data from a medium-format H-system, X-system, or CFV back, wrapped in a TIFF-style container with Hasselblad's own tags and colour management (HNCS). Current backs record 14-bit or 16-bit data at up to 11656 × 8742 pixels, and Hasselblad's datasheet for the CFV 100C puts an average capture at 206 MB. It is a single photograph, and an extremely large one.

So a video made from it is a still held on screen — silent, motionless, for however long you asked. That is worth doing in a handful of real situations: a title card, slate, or product still that has to enter an editing timeline as footage; a product shot that a platform will only accept as a video upload; a sequence of captures strung together as a hard-cut slideshow; or a client deliverable where the receiving system takes video files and nothing else.

It is not worth doing if you simply want to see or share the photograph. The conversion costs the RAW's editing latitude, most of its resolution, and all of its metadata, and gives back a file that is harder to view than a JPG. If that is your situation, render a still instead and stop.

Choosing a Container

Still or Video? Pick the Right Target First

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the video move, or have any sound?

Neither. A 3FR is one photograph, so the output is that single rendered frame held for the duration you chose — a freeze frame, with no pan, zoom, or transition. It is also silent: there is no audio anywhere in a still image to encode, so the clip carries a video stream only. Motion and sound are things you add on an editing timeline afterwards.

Which container and codec should I choose?

If nothing downstream has an opinion, choose MP4 — H.264 in MP4 is the most widely playable video file in existence, and a static frame encodes into it very efficiently. Choose MOV for Final Cut and Apple workflows, WebM for direct embedding in a web page, MKV when you want a permissive container, and MTS only when an AVCHD-era project demands it. The "Video File Extension" dropdown lists more than thirty options, but for a still-as-video the container matters far more than the codec.

What resolution will the clip be if my capture is 100 megapixels?

Much smaller than the original, whatever you choose. A Hasselblad 100 MP back records 11656 × 8742 pixels; a 4K video frame is 3840 × 2160 and 1080p is 1920 × 1080, so even the most generous video target keeps only a fraction of those pixels. "Video resolution" lets you pick "Keep original", a preset, or exact dimensions, but every path ends at a video-sized frame. Resolution-critical work belongs in 3FR to TIFF, not in a video container.

Can I make a slideshow from several Hasselblad captures?

Yes. Upload them together and set "Merge strategy" to "Merge images" — each still is held for the "Image Duration" you set and they play back to back in one file. "Video per image" does the opposite, writing a separate clip per capture. Be clear about what you get: hard cuts between stills, no cross-fades, no Ken Burns-style movement, and no music bed. Those are editing-timeline features, and this is a converter.

Will the RAW's colour depth and editing latitude survive?

No. A 3FR holds 14-bit or 16-bit undemosaiced sensor data, which is why white balance, exposure, and highlight recovery stay adjustable in Phocus or Lightroom. Encoding video requires a finished 8-bit frame, so the converter demosaics the capture and commits to a development before the encoder ever sees it. Grade in Phocus first if the look matters, and keep the .3fr — it is the only version that can be reinterpreted later.

Why won't my 3FR open in a normal photo app or media player?

Because it is a proprietary RAW format, not a picture. Hasselblad has written 3FR since the H2D generation in the mid-2000s, and it is meant to be read by Phocus — free for Windows and macOS, which imports RAW as either 3FR or FFF — or by RAW-aware editors such as Lightroom, Capture One, and RawTherapee. A phone gallery or a media player has no decoder for undemosaiced medium-format sensor data plus Hasselblad-specific tags. Converting is what turns it into something ordinary software understands.

Does the white background mean something went wrong?

No — it is padding. Medium-format frames are far squarer than the 16:9 shape of most video presets, so the encoder fills the leftover edges with the "Background Color" setting, which starts on White. Change that colour, or choose a "Fixed Resolutions" value whose aspect ratio is closer to the capture, and the bars shrink or change colour. Nothing is being cropped away by the padding itself.

How are my files handled, and how big a 3FR can I upload?

Your capture is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, then 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 frame is not degraded twice, once by the downscale and again by the encoder. The practical limit is upload time rather than the encode: a static frame compresses very efficiently, while a 206 MB average 3FR takes real time to send.