CRW to MPEG-2 Converter

Turn Canon CRW Raws into an MPEG-2 Clip

CRW is the first raw format Canon ever shipped, and it is the one modern software is most likely to shrug at. Converting a CRW to MPEG-2 demosaics the file on our servers and writes the resulting picture as a short silent video in an MPEG program stream — the format DVD authoring tools, set-top players and broadcast ingest desks still expect. This page covers what the converter actually does with a CRW, which of the on-screen controls change the result, and which ones do nothing at all on an MPEG-2 target.

How to Convert CRW to MPEG-2

1. Upload Your CRW File: Drag the .crw onto the page or click "+ Add Files". This page accepts .crw only — a .cr2 or .cr3 from a later Canon body needs its own converter. 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.
2. Set the Video resolution: This is the control that matters. "Keep original" encodes at the raw's decoded pixel dimensions; "Preset Resolutions" picks a height and derives the width from the picture's own aspect; "Fixed Resolutions" and "Width x Height" let you type exact numbers such as 720 × 480 or 720 × 576.
3. Set Image Duration and Background Color (Optional): Image Duration decides how long the still is held on screen and runs from a single frame at 60 fps up to ten seconds per image; leave it alone and you get five seconds. Background Color fills any letterbox or pillarbox bars and starts on White.
4. Choose a Merge strategy for multiple files: With several CRWs queued, "Merge images" concatenates them into one MPEG-2 slideshow and "Video per image" hands back one clip per raw. Click Convert to download.

What the Controls Actually Do on an MPEG-2 Target

The File Compression group renders three modes — Quality Preset, Constant Quality and Constraint Quality — and on this particular target none of them changes the encode. MPEG-2 has no CRF mode, so the quality preset falls back to scaling the source bitrate, and a still photograph has no source bitrate to scale. Constant Quality and Constraint Quality are both converted to a plain bitrate request before they reach the encoder, and that request is then replaced by a minimum derived from the output resolution. The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: resolution is the only lever on file size here.

CRW at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is CRW so much harder to open than CR2?

Because CRW is not a TIFF file. CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW and most other raws wrap their sensor data in a TIFF container, so any tool with a TIFF parser gets a foot in the door. CRW is built on CIFF, Canon's own heap-based container — the file begins II then the literal text HEAPCCDR, which we confirmed on the EOS 10D sample used for this page — and a program that has not implemented CIFF specifically cannot read it at all. Canon stopped writing CRW in 2004, so today's raws from the same brand open everywhere while the older ones open nowhere.

What are the pixel dimensions of the video I get back?

They come from the decoded raw, not from the megapixel figure on the camera's spec sheet. The Canon EOS 10D file we tested decodes to 3088 × 2056 — slightly wider and taller than the 3072 × 2048 image the camera advertises, because the decoder exposes the full sensor area. On "Keep original" that is the frame size, rounded down to even numbers. Anything above 4096 pixels on the long edge is scaled down before encoding, but no CRW-era Canon body gets close to that ceiling.

Will this file play on a DVD player?

Only if you pick DVD dimensions. MPEG-2 is the right codec, but a DVD-Video stream also has to be 720 × 480 (NTSC) or 720 × 576 (PAL); a 3088 × 2056 MPEG-2 stream is far outside any MPEG-2 profile a hardware decoder implements and will be rejected or ignored. Use "Width x Height" to type the exact figures, then feed the result to an authoring application — the disc structure itself (the VIDEO_TS folder, the IFO and BUP files) is created by the authoring tool, not here.

Why does the Quality Preset dropdown not change my file size?

Because MPEG-2 does not support a constant-quality mode, so the preset falls back to scaling the source video's bitrate — and a photograph has no bitrate to scale. The encoder ends up on a bitrate derived from the output resolution instead. Constant Quality and Constraint Quality are collapsed into the same path. If you want a smaller file, lower the resolution; that is the only control on this page that moves the number.

Is there any audio in the output?

No, and there cannot be. A raw photograph carries no sound, so the Audio Codec group is suppressed entirely on this page and the file we write contains exactly one stream. If you later feed that MPEG-2 into an audio extractor it will fail rather than produce a silent track, because there is no audio stream to convert.

When does the Background Color actually show up?

Only when the output frame is a different shape from the picture. A 3:2 CRW placed into a 16:9 fixed resolution gets pillarbox bars down each side, and those bars are painted in the Background Color — White unless you change it. Choose "Keep original" or a height preset and the width follows the raw's own aspect ratio, so there are no bars to paint and the setting has nothing to do.

Can I build a slideshow from a whole shoot?

Yes. Queue as many CRWs as you like, leave Merge strategy on "Merge images", and each raw becomes one held segment; the clip length is the number of files multiplied by the Image Duration. Forty raws at five seconds each is a 200-second video. Switch to "Video per image" instead if you want a separate MPEG-2 file for every frame.

Should I convert to MPEG-2 at all, or to something else?

MPEG-2 makes sense when the destination is a DVD authoring tool, a broadcast ingest desk or an older set-top player. For anything modern it is the wrong choice — the same raw as CRW to MP4 is far smaller at the same visual quality and plays on phones and browsers. If you only want the picture rather than a video, CRW to JPG or CRW to TIFF skips the encode entirely.