AVCHD to MOV Converter

Convert AVCHD to MOV: What This Tutorial Covers

AVCHD is the HD camcorder format Sony and Panasonic introduced jointly in 2006: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video multiplexed into an MPEG-2 transport stream, written as .MTS on the camera's card and usually renamed .M2TS once it lands on a computer. MOV is Apple's QuickTime container, first released in 1991 and later used as the template for the MPEG-4 file format that ISO generalised into the ISO base media file format (ISO/IEC 14496-12). This tutorial is for anyone holding a pile of loose camcorder stream files that a Mac app refuses to touch, and it covers which file to upload, which settings actually matter, and what to do when a clip comes out combed, soft, or split in half.

How to Convert AVCHD to MOV

1. Upload Your AVCHD File: Drag the .MTS or .M2TS clip onto the page, or click "+ Add Files" to browse for it. Several clips can be queued at once and they all inherit the same settings.
2. Check Video Codec and Quality Preset: Open Advanced Options. MOV output starts on the H.264 video codec with AAC audio, and File Compression starts on Quality Preset at Very High (Recommended) — the combination that keeps camcorder footage looking like the original.
3. Set Video Resolution and Trim (Optional): Leave Video resolution on Keep original to hold the camera's native frame size, or switch to Preset Resolutions, Width x Height, or Resolution Percentage to scale down. Change Trim from Unchanged to Time Range and set a Start time and Duration to export only part of a long recording.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the MOV. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public.

AVCHD and MOV Side by Side

Walk-through: Picking Codec, Quality, and Audio

AVCHD already stores H.264, and this conversion decodes and re-encodes the picture rather than copying the stream across untouched — so the Quality Preset is the single setting that decides whether the MOV looks like the source.

• Just want a file that opens on a Mac: change nothing. H.264 video plus AAC audio in a MOV is exactly what QuickTime Player, Photos, iMovie, and Final Cut Pro expect.
• Feeding a Final Cut Pro timeline: keep H.264 at Very High. Final Cut lists H.264, HEVC, QuickTime formats, and Apple ProRes among its supported imports, so the MOV drops straight in. If the timeline scrubs sluggishly, let Final Cut build optimized media (ProRes) after import — that is a decode-cost problem, not a file-format problem.
• Need the clip much smaller: switch File Compression from Quality Preset to Specific file size and type a target in MB, rather than dragging the preset down to Low. Giving the encoder a size budget spends bitrate where the picture needs it.
• Handing audio to a mixer: the Audio Codec dropdown carries PCM 16-, 24-, and 32-bit Little Endian alongside AAC, AC3, and MP3, so you can hand a sound editor uncompressed audio inside the same MOV.

Choosing a File Compression Mode

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "Motion shows combed horizontal lines" — The camera shot one of AVCHD's interlaced modes (1080/60i or 1080/50i), where each frame is woven from two fields captured moments apart. The conversion carries those fields through faithfully; deinterlace on your editor's timeline, or shoot/choose progressive clips (1080/24p, 1080/50p, 1080/60p) where the problem does not exist.
• "The MOV looks softer than the original" — Quality Preset was set low, or an aggressive size target squeezed the bitrate. Re-run at Very High or Highest, and prefer Constant Quality over a percentage target when fidelity matters.
• "Final Cut imports it but playback stutters" — Long-GOP H.264 frames depend on their neighbours, so scrubbing forces the CPU to decode surrounding frames. Import it, then have Final Cut transcode to optimized media; or convert a low-resolution proxy with Preset Resolutions set to 720p.
• "Only part of my recording converted" — AVCHD cameras split long takes across several numbered .MTS files. Each one converts to its own MOV; drop the resulting clips onto a timeline back-to-back to restore the original take.
• "My Mac app rejects the .mts file entirely" — That is the usual reason people land here. Apple editors expect the whole camera folder tree, not an orphaned stream file; converting to MOV sidesteps the camera-archive import path completely.

When This Doesn't Work

If a clip refuses to load at all, it is usually a truncated .MTS copied off the card while recording was still finalising, or a file whose companion index was left behind. Copy the entire PRIVATE/AVCHD tree off the SD card and re-upload the stream file from inside BDMV/STREAM/. If the footage carries the raw camera extensions rather than an .avchd wrapper, the tuned MTS to MOV converter and M2TS to MOV converter accept them directly. And if you only need the soundtrack from the clip, skip the video entirely with AVCHD to WAV.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does converting AVCHD to MOV lose quality?

A little, unavoidably. AVCHD is already lossy H.264, and building a broadly compatible MOV means decoding that video and encoding it again rather than copying the bits across, so this is a generational re-encode. At the Very High preset the difference is very hard to see on camcorder footage; at low presets or tight size targets it becomes obvious. What you never get is a quality gain — the point of the conversion is compatibility, not a better picture.

Final Cut Pro already lists AVCHD as a supported format — why convert to MOV?

Because Apple's AVCHD support is built around the camera's folder structure. Final Cut expects to import from a camera or a camera archive containing the full AVCHD/BDMV tree; a single .MTS file that somebody copied off the card in isolation frequently will not import. Converting that orphaned stream to a plain H.264 MOV gives you a file any Apple app treats as ordinary media, with no camera-archive step involved.

My camcorder footage is 1080i — will the MOV be interlaced too?

Yes. AVCHD's most common consumer modes are 1080/60i and 1080/50i, and the conversion preserves the interlaced frames rather than inventing progressive ones. Final Cut and iMovie deinterlace on playback, but if you need a clean progressive master, apply a deinterlace filter in your editor before export.

What happens to my camcorder's Dolby AC-3 audio track?

It is decoded and re-encoded to AAC, which every Apple application reads. AVCHD audio is normally Dolby Digital AC-3 at 64–640 kbit/s (up to 5.1 channels), though some professional NXCAM bodies record Linear PCM instead. The AC-3 stream is not carried across untouched; if you would rather have uncompressed audio in the MOV, pick one of the PCM entries in the Audio Codec dropdown.

Can I keep the original resolution and frame rate?

Yes — leave Video resolution on Keep original. AVCHD records 1920×1080, 1440×1080, or 1280×720 at frame rates including 1080/60i, 1080/50i, 1080/24p, 1080/50p, 1080/60p, and 720/60p, and the MOV inherits whichever your camera used. There is nothing to upscale past: the AVCHD specification has no 4K mode.

Will the MOV play on Windows, or do I need extra software?

MOV is only a container, and the one this converter writes holds ordinary H.264 video with AAC audio — the same payload an MP4 carries. Anything that can decode H.264 can therefore play it, and VLC reads it on Windows, macOS, and Linux without extra codecs. The friction you occasionally hit is the extension rather than the content: some Windows utilities and upload forms filter on .mov. When that happens, convert to AVCHD to MP4 instead — identical codecs, a container nothing objects to.

My recording is split into several .MTS files — how do I get one MOV?

Convert each segment, then join them on a timeline or with a merge tool; this converter processes one clip per output file rather than stitching a folder together. AVCHD cameras deliberately split long recordings into numbered stream files, and consecutive segments butt together seamlessly once they are back in order.

How are my files handled, and how long do you keep them?

Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public. Nothing is kept for training, indexing, or resale, and you do not need an account to convert a clip.