BMP to MPG Converter

BMP to MPG: What This Tutorial Covers

A .bmp is one still picture with no timeline and no audio, and a .mpg is a video container that expects both. The conversion bridges that gap by holding your bitmap on screen for a fixed number of seconds and encoding those held frames as MPEG video. This walk-through covers picking the hold duration, controlling the frame size, dealing with the letterbox bars that appear when your bitmap is not 16:9, and the cases where an MPG is the wrong target entirely.

How to Convert BMP to MPG

1. Upload Your BMP File: Drag your .bmp onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Queue several bitmaps at once and use Merge strategy to pick Merge images (one clip containing every still, in order) or Video per image (a separate .mpg per file).
2. Set the Duration: Open Advanced Options and choose Duration under Image Duration — this is how long the single frame is held. The control opens on "5 seconds per frame" and ranges from one single frame (1/60s through 1/2s) up to 10 seconds per frame.
3. Set Video Resolution and Background Color: Video resolution offers Keep original (frame matches the bitmap's own pixel dimensions), Fixed Resolutions (1920 x 1080 through 256 x 144 and vertical/square presets), Preset Resolutions, or an explicit Width x Height. Background Color opens on White and fills any letterbox or pillarbox bars. Under File Compression, Quality Preset opens on "Very High (Recommended)".
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .mpg. 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.

Walk-through: Choosing the Duration

Duration is the only setting on this page that has no equivalent in the source file, so it is the one worth thinking about. Because a bitmap contains exactly one image, the encoder loops that image for the length you pick and writes at one frame per second unless you ask for something else. The result is a video whose runtime you chose, not one the file dictated.

• Making a title or spacer card for an edit: pick 5-10 seconds. That gives an editor plenty of handle to trim back rather than having to stretch a short clip.
• Dropping a single freeze frame into a timeline: pick one of the sub-second entries — "1/24s (single frame at 24fps)" or "1/30s (single frame at 30fps)" — so the still lands as one frame at your project's rate instead of a five-second block you have to cut down.
• Building a slideshow from numbered bitmaps: upload them all, choose Merge images, and set a per-frame duration. Total runtime is the number of images multiplied by that duration, so twelve stills at 5 seconds each give a 60-second clip.
• Faking a time-lapse from a frame sequence: merge with a sub-second duration. At "1/24s" each bitmap becomes a single frame of 24 fps playback.
• Digital signage or a kiosk loop: pick 8-10 seconds. Static slides need dwell time for someone walking past to actually read them.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The clip is five seconds and I wanted one frame" — the Duration control opens on "5 seconds per frame". Sub-second single-frame entries sit at the top of the same dropdown.
• "There are white bars down the sides" — your bitmap's aspect ratio does not match the frame you selected, so the encoder pads instead of stretching. Either set Video resolution to Keep original so the frame matches the image exactly, or change Background Color from White to something that blends with your artwork.
• "The MPG will not play in a web page" — MPEG-2 in a program stream is not an HTML5 <video> format. No mainstream browser plays .mpg inline. Use BMP to MP4 when the clip is destined for a website, a phone, or a social upload.
• "My text and thin lines look soft" — MPEG-2 is a lossy, DCT-based codec built for moving photographic content, and it is unkind to hard-edged screenshots and UI captures. Raise Quality Preset to Highest, or keep the artwork as a still with BMP to PNG.
• "The video has no sound" — that is expected and not fixable at this step; see the FAQ below.
• "The file is bigger than I expected for a static picture" — MPEG-2 has no modern inter-frame tricks and re-sends a lot of data on every keyframe. Lower Quality Preset, shrink the frame with a Fixed Resolutions preset, or shorten the duration.

When This Doesn't Work

MPG is a deliberately old target. Choose it when a DVD or VCD authoring tool, a legacy set-top box, a broadcast ingest system, or a piece of signage hardware specifically asks for MPEG video and refuses a raw image. If you actually want a small, portable still, converting to video is the wrong move — BMP to PNG or BMP to JPG will be a fraction of the size and open anywhere. And if a downstream tool rejects the .mpg for being MPEG-2 rather than H.264, convert to an H.264 target instead; MPEG-2 cannot be re-labelled into an MP4 by renaming, because the video has to be re-encoded.

MPG Compared With the Other BMP Video Targets

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my MPG have no sound?

Because there is nothing to encode. A BMP file is a header, an optional colour table, and a pixel array — the format has no audio stream and no way to carry one, so the converter writes a video-only file. In our testing, a 1920 x 1080 bitmap converted with the defaults produced a file that ffprobe reports as a single stream, codec_type=video, with a duration of exactly 5.000000 seconds and no audio stream at all. To add music or narration, run the conversion here and then bring the silent clip into an editor such as Shotcut, Kdenlive, or DaVinci Resolve.

What codec ends up inside the .mpg?

MPEG-2 video, standardised jointly by ITU-T and ISO/IEC as ITU-T H.262, "Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information: Video", whose first edition was approved in July 1995. It is wrapped in an MPEG program stream, which is what the .mpg extension conventionally means. The Video Codec control also offers MPEG-1 if you are feeding something genuinely ancient, such as a VCD authoring chain.

How long will the video be if I upload ten bitmaps?

If you choose Merge images, the runtime is simply the number of images multiplied by the per-frame Duration: ten stills at the default 5 seconds each give a 50-second clip, and ten stills at "1/24s" give a clip a little under half a second long. If you choose Video per image you get ten separate .mpg files, each as long as the Duration you picked.

Can I add motion, a pan, or a zoom to the still?

No. This is a format conversion, not an animation tool: the same pixels are held for the duration you set, so the picture never moves. A Ken Burns-style pan or zoom is generated by a video editor that re-samples the image over time, which is a different operation. Convert here first, then apply the move in an editor.

My BMP is portrait — will it be stretched to fit a widescreen frame?

No, it is padded rather than distorted. When the source aspect ratio does not match the frame you selected, the encoder centres the image and fills the leftover area with the Background Color (White by default, with Black and around two dozen other swatches available). If you would rather have no bars at all, set Video resolution to Keep original and the output frame will match your bitmap's own dimensions.

Does converting to MPG make the file smaller than the BMP?

Usually, yes, and often dramatically so — but for an unhelpful reason. An uncompressed 24-bit bitmap stores three bytes per pixel with each row padded out to a 4-byte boundary, which is why a 1920 x 1080 example on our test bench measures 6,220,854 bytes. MPEG-2 is lossy, so it discards high-frequency detail to hit its bitrate. You are trading picture fidelity for size, not compressing losslessly. If size is the actual goal and you want to keep the image sharp, BMP to PNG or BMP to WebP is the right tool.

Will an .mpg play on an iPhone, an Android phone, or a web page?

Not reliably. MPEG-2 in a program stream is not one of the formats HTML5 <video> is expected to support, and mobile operating systems generally will not open a bare .mpg without a third-party player. Desktop VLC and mpv handle it fine, and so do DVD players and broadcast decoders. For anything that has to play on a phone or in a web page, use BMP to MP4.

Can I convert the MPG back into a still image later?

Yes, but you will not get your bitmap back. Extracting a frame gives you the decoded MPEG-2 picture, which has already been through lossy compression, so fine detail and sharp edges will not match the original pixel values. Keep the source .bmp — or a lossless copy made with BMP to PNG — if you may need the exact pixels again.

What happens to the colour depth of a 32-bit or 8-bit bitmap?

MPEG-2 encodes in a chroma-subsampled YUV colour space, so an indexed 8-bit bitmap is expanded and a 32-bit one is reduced to what the codec can represent. Any alpha channel described by a BITMAPV4HEADER or BITMAPV5HEADER is discarded, because video formats have no transparency: the transparent area is filled with the Background Color instead. If transparency matters, keep the image as an image — BMP to PNG preserves an alpha channel.