CR3 to MTS Converter

CR3 to MTS Converter

.MTS is the file extension AVCHD camcorders write to their cards: an MPEG transport stream carrying H.264 video, defined by the AVCHD specification Sony and Panasonic introduced in 2006. A Canon .cr3 is the opposite kind of file — a single raw photograph with no timeline at all. Converting one to the other renders the raw into ordinary pixels and holds that one motionless frame in a transport stream for a duration you choose. The clip is silent and static by construction. The honest reason to make one is that an AVCHD-era editor or authoring tool on your desk ingests .mts and nothing else; for anything modern, CR3 to MP4 is smaller and far more portable.

AVCHD and the MTS Extension at a Glance

MTS, M2TS and MP4 Compared

How to Convert CR3 to MTS

1. Upload Your CR3 File: Drag and drop your .cr3 onto the page or click "+ Add Files" — EOS R-series and EOS M50 captures, lossless raw or lossy C-RAW, all work, and several can be queued together.
2. Set Merge Strategy and Image Duration: Merge strategy defaults to "Merge images", combining every upload into one clip; "Video per image" writes one .mts per photo. Image Duration sets the hold, from 1/60 of a second up to 10 seconds, default 5 seconds per frame.
3. Set Video resolution, Video Codec, and Background Color: Video resolution defaults to "Keep original" — choose the 1920 x 1080 fixed preset if the receiving tool validates against the AVCHD frame size. Video Codec defaults to H.264, which is what AVCHD is built on. Background Color (White by default) fills the bars around a photo whose shape does not match the frame.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the silent .mts clip. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is MTS the same thing as M2TS, and which one do I get here?

Not quite — the video matches, the wrapper does not. AVCHD camcorders use the .MTS spelling and computers and Blu-ray discs use .m2ts, and the extension decides how the transport stream is packetized. This page writes .MTS as a plain stream of 188-byte packets that begins with the 0x47 sync byte, which is what AVCHD-era editors and templates filter on. If your workflow expects the other name, CR3 to M2TS renders the same frame into BDAV 192-byte packets that each prefix a 4-byte timestamp header — a slightly larger file, and a genuine re-frame rather than a rename.

Why is the clip completely silent?

Because a photograph has no audio to encode. The Audio Codec control is hidden whenever the source is an image, so the file is written video-only rather than with an empty track. The AVCHD specification itself allows Dolby AC-3 and uncompressed linear PCM audio, so an editor can add a soundtrack to the timeline afterwards — there simply is nothing in a raw still for this tool to put there.

Should I set Video resolution to 1920 x 1080?

If the receiving tool is strict about AVCHD, yes. The specification caps AVCHD at 1920 x 1080, and leaving Video resolution on "Keep original" writes the rendered photo's own dimensions — a 24-megapixel frame is roughly 6000 x 4000, and even after our render caps the long edge at 4096 pixels that is still far beyond the AVCHD ceiling. Choosing the 1920 x 1080 fixed preset produces a stream whose frame size an AVCHD-era importer will recognise. If you are only feeding a general-purpose player, "Keep original" is fine.

How many frames does the output actually contain?

Very few. There is no frame-rate control on this page and a motionless image is encoded at one frame per second with B-frames disabled, so a five-second hold is a five-frame stream. AVCHD hardware and authoring tools were designed around broadcast frame rates, so a still clip at 1 fps may need conforming inside your editor before it will sit correctly on a timeline — drop it on the sequence and let the editor re-render at the project rate.

Can I copy the .mts onto an SD card and play it like camcorder footage?

Not as-is. What you download is the bare transport stream; a camcorder also writes a folder structure with playlist and clip-information files alongside the streams, and that structure is what makes a card browsable as an AVCHD volume. Most editors will import the loose .mts directly, which is the normal way to use it.

Which video codec should I leave selected?

H.264. AVCHD is defined around H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, so that is both the default here and what AVCHD-era software expects to find inside an .mts. H.265, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX and Xvid are also selectable in the Video Codec menu, but H.265 in particular is outside the AVCHD specification, so a tool that made you want an .mts in the first place may well refuse it.

What happens to the raw latitude in my CR3?

It is spent at render time. CR3 stores 12-14 bit unprocessed sensor data using Canon's crx codec inside an ISO base media file format container, which is why exposure and white balance stay adjustable. Transport-stream video has no concept of undeveloped raw, so the converter must demosaic and tone-map the image into a finished 8-bit frame before encoding it. Adjust the raw in a proper editor first if the look matters, and keep the .cr3 as your master.

Does this handle lossy C-RAW files too?

Yes. The crx codec supports both lossless raw and the smaller lossy C-RAW ("compact raw") mode, and both are ordinary .cr3 files as far as this conversion is concerned. The render flattens either one into a finished video frame, so the difference does not survive into the .mts — C-RAW files just upload faster because they are smaller.

My CR3 is 24 megapixels — how much detail reaches the clip?

Only as much as the frame holds. Even at the AVCHD maximum of 1920 x 1080 you are keeping about two megapixels of a twenty-four megapixel capture, so roughly nine in ten pixels are discarded. That is normal for putting a photograph into video, not a fault in the conversion. If preserving detail is the point, keep it as an image instead — CR3 to TIFF holds the full frame without a video encoder in the way.

How are my files handled during conversion?

Your CR3 is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and packaged into a transport stream on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — never shared, never made public, no sign-up and no watermark. In our pipeline the raw is auto-rotated and re-rendered to a clean PNG, long edge clamped to 4096 pixels, before FFmpeg encodes it, which is what keeps very large captures from producing malformed streams. The practical limit on a big batch is upload size and time, since raw files often run tens of megabytes each.