HEVC to BMP Converter

HEVC to BMP Converter

HEVC (H.265) is a video codec, while BMP is a still-image format — so this conversion grabs a single frame out of your HEVC video and saves it as an uncompressed Windows Bitmap (.bmp). It exists for one specific need: a downstream tool — a legacy Windows app, an embedded display, or a machine-vision pipeline — that accepts only a raw, uncompressed bitmap and can't take a JPEG or PNG.

A .hevc file is a raw H.265 elementary bitstream — picture-only, with no audio track and no container holding timing or camera metadata. That's exactly what frame extraction needs: the decoder reads the H.265 parameter sets (VPS/SPS/PPS) directly from the stream and renders the picture at the moment you ask for. If your footage is an iPhone .mov instead (HEVC wrapped in a QuickTime container), use MOV to BMP — this page takes the raw .hevc stream specifically.

HEVC Format at a Glance

BMP Format at a Glance

How to Convert HEVC to BMP

1. Upload Your HEVC File: Drag and drop or click "Add Files" to load a .hevc (raw H.265) bitstream. Batch is supported.
2. Set Frame Selection: The default is Specific Frame with Time (seconds) at 0, which grabs the opening frame. Type a decimal timestamp like 2.100 (2 seconds, 100 ms) to grab a later frame, or switch to Multiple Screenshots and set a Capture Rate (for example, one frame per second) to pull a series.
3. Set Resolution (Optional): BMP is uncompressed, so resolution is the main lever on file size — keep the source resolution, choose a Preset Resolution (144p up to 4320p), scale by percentage, or enter a custom Width × Height. A Quality preset (High / Medium / Low) is also available.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. The frame is processed on our servers and downloads as a single .bmp — files are uploaded over an encrypted connection and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the BMP so much larger than the whole HEVC video?

Because BMP is uncompressed. HEVC (H.265) is a highly efficient codec that uses inter-frame prediction and discards perceptually redundant data, so an entire clip can be smaller than one of its raw frames. BMP does the opposite: it stores every pixel with no compression, so a 24-bit file is essentially width × height × 3 bytes plus a 54-byte header. In our testing, a 1080p frame (1920×1080) came out to ≈6.2 MB as a 24-bit BMP, versus roughly 1.5–3 MB as lossless PNG or 200–500 KB as JPG. A 4K frame (3840×2160) balloons to ≈24.9 MB.

Does this convert the whole video, or just one frame?

Just one frame. In Specific Frame mode it extracts a single still at the timestamp you set and saves it as one BMP; all motion is discarded. If you want to keep the moving footage, don't convert to BMP — use HEVC to MP4 for a widely playable video instead.

What bit depth and pixel format is the output BMP?

24-bit RGB (BI_RGB, uncompressed) — the most widely compatible BMP variant, readable by every Windows version, standard image viewers, and libraries like OpenCV and Pillow. Per the format spec, BMP stores 24-bit pixels in BGR order, bottom-up, with each row padded to a 4-byte boundary, but every modern reader handles that transparently. BMP itself also supports 1-, 4-, 8-, 16-, and 32-bpp variants; for an 8-bit indexed (256-color) BMP, do a second pass in a tool like ImageMagick or Photoshop.

Why is the first frame sometimes black or pixelated?

HEVC uses long groups of pictures (GOPs) — typically one IDR keyframe followed by many P- and B-frames that reference it. If you ask for a frame right at the very start (0), some raw streams don't present a complete keyframe until a fraction of a second in, so the first grab can decode dark or blocky. Nudge Time (seconds) forward by 0.1–0.5 s to land on or after the first keyframe.

Should I extract to BMP, PNG, or JPG?

Pick BMP only when your downstream tool genuinely requires an uncompressed bitmap — for example a legacy Windows utility, firmware image loader, or machine-vision step that reads raw pixels. Its one honest advantage over JPEG is that there's no second lossy generation: the decoded HEVC frame is written pixel-for-pixel. If you don't need raw pixels, a smaller lossless still is at HEVC to PNG (same pixel fidelity, ~2–5× smaller), and a small lossy still is at HEVC to JPG.

My file is a .mov from an iPhone, not .hevc — will it work here?

Not on this page. An iPhone records HEVC video inside a QuickTime .mov container by default; the codec inside is H.265, but the wrapper is MOV. This converter takes the raw .hevc elementary stream specifically. For camera-roll clips, use MOV to BMP instead — it reads the container directly.

Can I extract several BMP frames at once?

Yes. Switch Frame Selection to Multiple Screenshots and set a Capture Rate (for example, one frame per second, or every N seconds). Each captured frame is saved as its own BMP. Mind the totals, though: because each 1080p frame is ≈6.2 MB uncompressed, a 60-second clip sampled once per second is ~370 MB of BMPs. For dense sampling of long clips, PNG or JPG is usually the saner output.

Does the BMP keep any EXIF, GPS, or camera metadata?

No. A raw .hevc bitstream carries no container-level metadata to begin with, and the standard 24-bit BMP format has no EXIF or GPS fields — it stores only pixel data plus a small header. If you need date-taken, GPS, or camera tags preserved, extract to JPG or convert the still to another metadata-capable format afterward.

How long do you keep my uploaded file?

Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after conversion — no watermark, no sign-up, never shared or made public. A single-frame BMP grab from a 1080p clip completes in a couple of seconds; the practical limit on a large source is upload speed, not the frame extraction itself.