DCR to MTS Converter

DCR to MTS Converter

.DCR is the Kodak Digital Camera RAW still written by Kodak's professional DCS-series DSLRs and digital backs. .MTS is the camcorder spelling of an AVCHD transport stream — the format Sony and Panasonic introduced in 2006 for tapeless HD camcorders. Nothing about those two descriptions overlaps, which is exactly why this page exists: converting one to the other renders your RAW negative into a single finished video frame and wraps that motionless frame in an AVCHD-style stream, held on screen for a duration you choose, with no soundtrack. The two reference tables below spell out what each format actually is, then a short walkthrough covers the conversion and the settings that matter.

DCR Format at a Glance

MTS (AVCHD) Format at a Glance

How to Convert DCR to MTS

1. Upload Your DCR File: Drag and drop your Kodak .dcr onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse — files straight off a DCS 720x, DCS 760, DCS Pro 14n, SLR/n, SLR/c, or a DCS Pro Back. You can queue several at once.
2. Set the Image Duration: Use the Image Duration dropdown to choose how long the rendered frame is held. The page opens on 5 seconds per frame, and the list runs from a single 1/60s frame up to 10 seconds per frame.
3. Set Merge Strategy, Resolution, and Background Color (Optional): Merge strategy opens on "Merge images" — switch to "Video per image" for a separate .mts per photo. Video resolution opens on "Keep original"; pick a fixed 1920 x 1080 preset if your AVCHD editor expects a standard HD frame. Background Color opens on White and fills any letterbox bars.
4. Convert and Download: Leave Video Codec on H.264 — that is what AVCHD is built around — and Quality Preset on "Very High (Recommended)", then click "Convert". No sign-up, no watermark.

What the Converter Actually Does to the RAW

A DCR is an undeveloped negative, not a picture. It holds the sensor's high-bit Bayer mosaic with the white balance, exposure, and tone curve still open to interpretation, and a transport stream has no concept of any of that. So before a single byte of .mts is written, the converter has to develop the RAW: demosaic the mosaic, apply a white balance and exposure, and flatten it to an ordinary 8-bit video frame. That frame is one interpretation of your negative, and the latitude that made the DCR worth keeping does not travel with it.

• If the look matters, develop the DCR yourself in Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, or RawTherapee, export a finished image, and bring that into the timeline rather than relying on the converter's default development.
• If you are placing one still as a slate, leave Image Duration at 5 seconds per frame, or raise it toward 10 for a longer hold.
• If you are assembling several DCRs into one stream, keep Merge strategy on "Merge images"; each photograph is shown for its set duration, back to back, with no cross-fades.
• If your editor expects 1080p, set Video resolution to the fixed 1920 x 1080 preset. A DCS Pro capture is a 2-to-16-megapixel-class image, far larger than any HD frame, and every still is normalised to a PNG capped at 4096 pixels on the long edge before encoding, so it is downscaled either way.
• Leave Video Codec on H.264. AVCHD is defined around H.264/MPEG-4 AVC; H.265 is selectable in the dropdown but is not part of the AVCHD specification and is commonly refused by AVCHD-era authoring software.

When This Doesn't Work

This conversion earns its keep only inside AVCHD-era pipelines, and even there it is a one-way render — the demosaic, white balance, and exposure are baked into the frame for good. The bigger long-term risk with DCR specifically is the decoder: Kodak exited professional DSLRs in May 2005, so the software that still reads these files keeps thinning, and a very old or unusual .dcr may not render everywhere. If that happens, develop it once in a RAW editor that still handles the DCS line and convert the exported image instead. If your real goal is a shareable video rather than AVCHD footage, render DCR to MP4, which carries the same H.264 video in a container that plays on phones, browsers, TVs, and ordinary editors. If you want a picture rather than a clip at all, DCR to JPG is the everyday answer and DCR to TIFF the preservation master. Either way, keep the original .dcr archived — it may be the only copy of a twenty-year-old frame.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

They carry the same encoded video, but not in the same packet framing. AVCHD camcorders use the .MTS spelling on their own media, and computers and Blu-ray discs use .m2ts — and that extension decides how the transport stream is written. This page outputs .MTS as a plain stream of 188-byte packets beginning with the 0x47 sync byte, which is what AVCHD-era editors and authoring templates usually expect. If your tool specifically wants the four-letter name, DCR to M2TS writes the same rendered frame in BDAV 192-byte packets that each prefix a 4-byte timestamp header — a slightly larger file, and the right one to convert to rather than renaming this download.

Why is the MTS completely silent?

Because there is nothing to encode. A still photograph carries no audio, so the Audio Codec control is hidden entirely on this page and the output is a video-only stream. The AVCHD specification itself does allow Dolby Digital (AC-3) and uncompressed linear PCM in stereo or 5.1 — but that applies to camcorder footage, not to a clip built from a photo. Add narration or music on your editing timeline after importing.

Will this .MTS play off an SD card like a real camcorder clip?

Not as a card structure. What you download is the bare transport stream — the part that lives inside an AVCHD volume's BDMV/STREAM/ folder — without the playlist and clip-information files a camcorder writes alongside it. Copying it onto a card will not rebuild a browsable AVCHD volume that a camera or set-top player can navigate. The clip does play in software players such as VLC and mpv, and imports into AVCHD-aware editors and authoring tools that rebuild the surrounding structure for you.

Which video codec and bitrate does the output use?

H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, which is what AVCHD is defined around, and the encode is driven by the Quality Preset rather than a bitrate you type in. Because the source is a still image, the page hides the bitrate and target-file-size compression modes entirely — the visible choices are Quality Preset, Constant Quality, and Constraint Quality. For reference, the AVCHD specification itself tops out at 24 Mbit/s on non-DVD media and 28 Mbit/s for 1080p50/60, but a motionless frame needs a tiny fraction of that.

Is DCR uncompressed, and does that explain the quality I lose here?

No on both counts. DCR is a TIFF-based Kodak RAW that stores its sensor mosaic with lossless JPEG compression — the same approach Canon's CR2 and Adobe's DNG use — so no image information is discarded inside the file. The quality you lose making an .MTS comes entirely from the render: demosaicing the mosaic, baking in a white balance and exposure, flattening 12-to-14-bit data to an 8-bit frame, and downscaling that frame to video size. The format's compression has nothing to do with it.

What happens to all the RAW editing latitude in my DCR?

It is spent at the render step and cannot be recovered from the clip. The 12-to-14-bit sensor data is what lets you pull back blown highlights, lift shadows, and reset white balance long after the shot; placing that data into any video frame requires developing it first, because a transport stream has no notion of an undeveloped negative. Treat the .MTS as a disposable delivery file and keep the .dcr as your editable master.

Why would I convert a Kodak photo to MTS instead of MP4?

Almost the only good reason is an AVCHD-era pipeline. If you are working in an older editor or a disc-authoring tool that ingests .mts transport-stream footage and you need to drop in a still — a title card, a slate, an archival photograph — an .MTS clip slots into that timeline without a re-wrap. For every other purpose DCR to MP4 carries the same H.264 video in a smaller, far more widely supported file.

Can I build one MTS from a whole folder of Kodak stills?

Yes. Drop the files in together and leave Merge strategy on "Merge images"; each frame is developed, held for the duration you set, and written into a single stream in order. Five photographs at 5 seconds each produce a 25-second clip. Your files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after conversion — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public. For an .mts built from any image format rather than Kodak RAW specifically, see Image to MTS.