HEIF to MTS Converter

Convert HEIF to MTS: What This Tutorial Covers

This walk-through is for anyone who needs to drop an Apple HEIF photo into an AVCHD-era editing or disc-authoring project that only ingests .MTS clips — a Sony or Panasonic camcorder timeline, for example, that won't import a still image directly. By the end you'll have a silent, motionless .MTS clip that holds your photo on screen for a duration you set, plus the honest caveats about resolution, sound, and what an .MTS file actually is. HEIF is the High Efficiency Image File Format (an MPEG/ISO base media container, usually HEVC-coded — the same family as the .heic photos iPhones save by default); MTS is the camcorder spelling of an AVCHD transport stream. This converter bridges the two on our servers.

How to Convert HEIF to MTS

1. Upload Your HEIF File: Drag and drop your .heif files onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. You can queue several at once and they share the same settings.
2. Set Image Duration: Open the Image Duration control and pick how long the still is held on screen — the default is 5 seconds per frame, and you can choose anything from a single frame up to 10 seconds.
3. Set Quality Preset, Resolution, and Background Color (Optional): Leave the Quality Preset on "Very High (Recommended)", set Video resolution ("Keep original", a fixed Width x Height, or a preset), and pick a Background Color (default Black) to fill any letterboxed area.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save your silent .MTS clip. No sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: Picking a Duration and a Frame Size

The two settings that matter most for slotting a photo into an AVCHD project are Image Duration and Video resolution — get these right and the clip drops onto a camcorder timeline cleanly.

• Match the duration to the gap you're filling. If you want the photo to sit on the timeline for five seconds, set Image Duration to 5 seconds per frame; the clip is then trimmed like any other footage in your editor. The shorter sub-second options (1/24, 1/30, 1/60 of a second) exist for building single frames at a target frame rate, which is rarely what you want for a held still.
• Match the frame size to your project, not the photo. AVCHD is an HD format — 1080i, 720p, or progressive 1080p added in the 2011 amendment of the spec. A modern iPhone photo is far larger than 1080p (recent models capture 12-48 megapixels), so the still is downscaled to a video frame: a roughly 4000 x 3000 photo becomes a 1920 x 1080-class frame. Set Video resolution to a fixed 1920 x 1080 (or your project's frame size) so it matches the rest of your AVCHD footage instead of letterboxing.
• Use Background Color for aspect-ratio mismatch. A 4:3 photo placed in a 16:9 frame leaves pillarbox bars; the Background Color dropdown (default Black) sets what fills them. White or a brand color can read better for a title card or slate.

The codec is handled for you: MTS defaults to H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), the codec the AVCHD specification is built around. Both HEIF's HEVC and MTS's H.264 are MPEG codecs, but they are not interchangeable — the still is decoded from HEVC and re-encoded as H.264, so there's no stream reuse, just a clean re-encode of one frame.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The clip plays as a black or blank frame" — the photo was placed in a frame much larger than itself with no resize, or the Background Color is masking it. Set Video resolution to a fixed size that matches your footage and confirm the still isn't being padded out of view.
• "There's no sound" — that's expected. A still image has no audio track, so this .MTS is silent by design. AVCHD normally carries Dolby AC-3 or linear PCM audio, but there's nothing to encode from a photo. Add a music or narration track on your editing timeline instead.
• "My editor won't import the .MTS" — most AVCHD-aware editors expect the file inside an AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/ folder structure, not a loose stream. Some editors import a bare .MTS fine; others (iMovie, for instance) need the surrounding card hierarchy, which a tool like multiAVCHD or tsMuxeR can build around the clip.
• "The photo looks soft compared to the original" — the downscale from a multi-megapixel photo to a ~2-megapixel 1080p frame discards detail by design; HD video simply can't hold a full-resolution photo. For a sharp, full-size copy of the picture, keep it an image with HEIF to JPG.

When This Doesn't Work

If your only goal is to view or share the photo, converting it to a silent HD clip is the wrong tool — keep it an image with HEIF to JPG, the standard iPhone-photo compatibility escape that opens everywhere. If you want a still-as-video for a modern editor, phone, TV, or the web, HEIF to MP4 carries the same H.264 video in a smaller, far more widely playable file — reserve MTS for AVCHD-era tools that specifically demand that extension. And if the .heif is a Live Photo's still frame, only the photo is converted here; the motion component is a separate video the iPhone stores alongside it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will this animate my HEIF photo or just hold it as a frozen frame?

It holds it as a frozen frame. Each photo becomes one motionless still displayed for the duration you set under Image Duration, so the .MTS plays as a static clip with no movement and no sound. This is the right behavior for a title card, slate, or photo you're inserting into an AVCHD timeline. If you upload several photos and pick "Merge images" under Merge strategy, they're joined back to back — each shown in turn — which is a sequence of stills, not a cross-faded slideshow with transitions.

Why is the .MTS lower resolution than my original iPhone photo?

Because AVCHD is an HD video format and your photo is much larger than HD. Recent iPhones capture roughly 12-48 megapixels, while 1080p video is about 2 megapixels, so the still is downscaled to fit a video frame. In our testing, a 4032 x 3024 HEIF set to a fixed 1920 x 1080 produced a clean 1080p clip, but the fine detail of the full-size photo can't survive the downscale. If you need the full-resolution picture, keep it an image with HEIF to JPG rather than turning it into video.

Why does the AVCHD clip use H.264 when HEIF uses HEVC?

Because H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) is the codec the AVCHD specification is built around, so it imports most cleanly into AVCHD editors and plays on the widest range of older hardware. HEIF stores HEVC (H.265) image data; both are MPEG codecs, but they aren't interchangeable in this container. The converter decodes the still from HEVC and re-encodes it as H.264 — there's no shortcut that reuses the original stream, just a single-frame re-encode.

Is .MTS the same as .m2ts, and is this a complete AVCHD card?

.MTS and .m2ts are the same BDAV transport stream — camcorders write the file as .MTS, and the identical stream is called .m2ts once it's on a computer or Blu-ray disc. What you download here is the bare stream, not a full AVCHD card structure: a real camcorder card stores the clip inside a BDMV/STREAM/ folder alongside playlist and clip-information files. So copying this .MTS onto an SD card won't reproduce a browsable AVCHD volume; AVCHD-aware tools like multiAVCHD or tsMuxeR build that surrounding structure for you.

Does this accept the .heic photos my iPhone takes?

This page is set up for the .heif extension. iPhones usually save photos as .heic, which is HEVC-coded image data in the same HEIF container family — the extension differs but the underlying format is the same. If your files end in .heic, look for the matching HEIC-input converter; if they're already .heif, this page is the right one.

What happens to my photo after I convert it?

Your HEIF file is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after the conversion — no sign-up, no watermark, and your files are never shared or made public. The practical limit on a big job is your connection speed and the file's size, not your device.