ARW to WebM Converter

Convert ARW to WebM Online

This converter develops a Sony ARW raw photo into a finished frame, holds that frame on screen for a duration you choose, and wraps it in a WebM video file. There is no motion and no sound — a still photograph has neither — so what you get is a steady image that behaves like a video clip: a slate, a title card, a hold at the top of an edit, or a still you can drop straight onto a web-video timeline. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours later. No sign-up, no watermark.

How to Convert ARW to WebM

1. Upload Your ARW File: Drag and drop your Sony .arw onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Several raw frames can be queued in one batch.
2. Set the Merge Strategy and Image Duration: "Merge strategy" decides whether multiple uploads become one clip ("Merge images") or a separate video each ("Video per image"). "Image Duration" runs from 1/60s, 1/30s and 1/24s — exactly one frame at those rates — through 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5 seconds up to 10 seconds per frame.
3. Choose the Video Codec, Background Color and Resolution: "Video Codec" offers VP8, VP9 and AV1. "Background Color" is preselected to White and fills any letterbox bars left when the photo's shape does not match the frame. "Video resolution" stays on "Keep original" unless you pick a fixed size such as 1920 x 1080.
4. Convert and Download: Leave "Quality preset" on "Very High (Recommended)" under File Compression, click "Convert", and download the WebM.

ARW vs WebM: What You're Converting Between

Choosing a Codec, Duration and Frame Size

A word on that last row: "Keep original" on a 24-megapixel Sony frame produces a clip around 6000 x 4000 pixels, well beyond 4K. It encodes fine, but phone, tablet and TV hardware decoders are built around standard frame sizes, so an oversized clip may fall back to software decoding or refuse to play on lighter devices. Pick a fixed resolution whenever the file has to play somewhere you do not control.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the WebM clip have any motion or sound?

No to both. The conversion takes one developed ARW frame and holds it on screen for the duration you set — there is no pan, zoom or animation added, and because a photograph carries no audio track, the output is silent. The Audio Codec dropdown does list Opus and Vorbis, which WebM supports, but there is nothing on the input side for them to encode. If you want several photos to play in sequence, upload them together and choose "Merge images" under Merge strategy.

Why does my photo have white bars, and can I change the color?

Because a photo's aspect ratio rarely matches a video frame's. A 3:2 Sony frame placed in a 16:9 output leaves space at the sides, and rather than stretch or crop your image the converter fills that space with the "Background Color", which is preselected to White. Twenty-five named colors are available in the dropdown, so black, gray or a brand color is one click away. To avoid bars entirely, leave "Video resolution" on "Keep original" so the frame takes the photo's own proportions.

Which codec should I choose — VP8, VP9 or AV1?

VP9 is the sensible default: it is the newer of the two codecs the WebM Project defines, it compresses a static frame efficiently, and it plays in every browser that supports WebM at all. Choose VP8 when you need the broadest compatibility with older players and embedded devices, since it has been around far longer. AV1 is the newest and can be smaller again, but it encodes more slowly and playback support is thinner outside recent browsers and hardware.

Where does a WebM file actually play?

In browsers, essentially everywhere current: Chrome from version 25, Firefox from 28, Edge from 79, Opera from 16, desktop Safari from 16 and iOS Safari from 17.4, per the caniuse support tables. Outside the browser it is less universal — VLC, mpv and most modern editors handle it, but some older TVs, set-top boxes and consumer players do not. If the file has to play on unknown hardware, convert ARW to MP4 instead, since H.264 in MP4 is the closest thing to a universal video format.

How long can the clip be, and how do I match my project's frame rate?

The "Image Duration" dropdown tops out at 10 seconds per frame and bottoms out at 1/60s, which is a single frame at 60 fps. The fractional entries are labelled with the rate they correspond to — 1/24s, 1/30s and 1/60s — so if you are cutting a 24 fps sequence and want exactly one frame of hold, choose 1/24s. For a title card or a hold that a viewer will actually read, 3 to 5 seconds per frame is the usual range.

Can I turn a set of ARW photos into one clip?

Yes. Upload the frames together and set "Merge strategy" to "Merge images"; each photo is held for the duration you chose and they play back to back in a single WebM. "Video per image" does the opposite and returns a separate clip for each raw file. Remember that the clip is still silent, so a merged sequence is a slideshow without a soundtrack unless you add one in an editor afterwards.

Does converting to WebM cost me my raw editing latitude?

Yes, entirely. An ARW is an undeveloped negative — white balance, exposure and highlight recovery are all still adjustable while the data stays raw. Encoding it into a video bakes the current interpretation into finished pixels, then compresses those pixels with a lossy video codec, so there is no route back to the sensor data afterwards. Keep the .arw as your master and treat the WebM as a disposable export you can always regenerate.

Should I convert straight to WebM, or export a photo first?

If you want a usable still to view, edit or share, go to a photo format: ARW to JPG for a universal copy or ARW to PNG for a lossless one. WebM is worth it only when you specifically need a video file — a slate, a hold, or a still that has to sit on a web-video timeline without being re-encoded from a still image first. For a clip that plays on the widest range of devices, ARW to MP4 is the safer target.

How are my files handled, and how long are they kept?

Your ARW is uploaded over an encrypted connection, developed and encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after the job finishes, along with the WebM it produced. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public. Since Sony raws commonly run 25 to 60 MB each, upload size and time are the practical limits on a large batch rather than anything in the encoder.