M2TS to AV1 Converter

M2TS vs AV1 — Should You Re-encode Your Camcorder Footage?

If you have a hard drive of AVCHD camcorder M2TS files eating space, AV1 is the codec with the best size-per-quality on offer, and re-encoding to it can cut those files roughly in half. If the footage is a master you may re-edit, or you need it to play on a TV or phone today, keep the M2TS and convert to MP4 instead. The honest summary: AV1 is an archival and bandwidth play, not a compatibility play, and this page produces a Matroska file carrying an .av1 name, which is a detail worth understanding before you convert a whole library.

Side-by-side Comparison

When to Keep the M2TS

• The footage is a master you will re-edit. Every re-encode is generational loss, and AV1 cannot undo it.
• The clip is interlaced 1080i, which most consumer AVCHD camcorders record. Combing is baked into the frames and there is no deinterlacing step in this conversion.
• You need it to play on a TV, phone, console or camera-brand software this week.
• The library is small enough that the disk savings are not worth hours of encoding.

When AV1 Is Worth It

• You are archiving years of camcorder footage and storage is the binding constraint.
• The material is high-motion or high-resolution, where AV1's efficiency gains are largest.
• You will play it back on a computer with VLC, mpv or a modern browser, or serve it from a media server that can transcode.
• You want a codec with no per-title decoder licensing to worry about for a personal archive.

How to Convert M2TS to AV1

1. Upload Your M2TS File: Drag the .m2ts clip onto the page or click "+ Add Files". Camcorder files run to gigabytes, so the upload is normally the longest step.
2. Pick a File Compression mode: Quality Preset is selected by default at "Very High (Recommended)". For archiving, Constant Quality holds visual quality steady and lets the file size float; Specific file size, Constant Bitrate, Variable Bitrate and Constraint Quality are there when you need to hit a target instead.
3. Set Audio Codec, Video resolution and Trim (optional): Audio is re-encoded to Opus unless you choose AAC, AC3, EAC3, DTS, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Vorbis. Video resolution keeps the original frame size by default, and Trim takes a Start time and Duration if you only want part of the clip.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert, download the file, and rename it to .mkv if a player refuses the .av1 extension. No sign-up, no watermark. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours.

What the .av1 File Actually Is

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the .av1 file keep the sound from my M2TS?

Yes. Because the output is a Matroska container rather than a bare video stream, the camcorder's audio track comes along and is re-encoded — to Opus by default, or to AAC, AC3, EAC3, DTS, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Vorbis if you pick one. If the file plays silently, the player is more likely missing an Opus decoder than missing the track; VLC and mpv handle it.

How much smaller will my camcorder footage get?

Meaningfully, though the exact figure depends on the content. NVIDIA's published comparison puts AV1 at 40% lower bitrate than H.264 for equal quality at 1080p60 — 7 Mbps against 11 Mbps at 42 dB PSNR. AVCHD records at up to a 24 Mbps system rate, so there is usually generous headroom to reclaim; static, low-motion footage saves less than handheld or action material.

Will I lose quality converting M2TS to AV1?

Some, because this is a re-encode and not a copy — the server always decodes and re-encodes, so there is no lossless passthrough available. Using Constant Quality at a high setting keeps the result visually close to the source while still shrinking it. If the footage is irreplaceable, keep the original M2TS as the master and treat the AV1 as the access copy.

Why is AV1 encoding so slow?

AV1 buys its compression with a much larger search space than H.264 — more partition shapes, more prediction modes, more transform options — so an encoder does far more work per frame. A long camcorder clip genuinely takes a while, and that is a property of the codec rather than a queue on our side. Trimming to the section you need, or downscaling with Video resolution, is the practical way to cut the wait.

My 1080i footage still looks combed — can the converter deinterlace it?

No. There is no deinterlacing anywhere in this pipeline, so interlaced fields are encoded as they arrive and horizontal combing on moving subjects is preserved in the output. AVCHD's most common consumer modes are 1080/60i and 1080/50i, so this affects a lot of camcorder footage. Deinterlace in a desktop editor before uploading if it matters; clips shot in 1080/24p, 1080/60p or 720p are unaffected.

My 1440 × 1080 clip comes out looking stretched or squashed — why?

Because AVCHD allows both 1920 × 1080 and 1440 × 1080 recording, and the 1440-wide modes use non-square pixels that a player stretches back to 16:9 on display. This conversion does not carry that pixel-aspect flag through, so the output can end up at its stored 1440 × 1080 shape. The fix is to set Video resolution to "Width x Height" and enter 1920 × 1080 explicitly, which bakes the correct display shape into the frame.

What actually plays a .av1 file?

VLC and mpv open the Matroska-wrapped file as-is, and renaming it to .mkv gets you past players that dispatch on the extension. Recent Intel, AMD and NVIDIA graphics hardware includes AV1 decoding, and modern browsers decode AV1 in supported containers. If the goal is a file that plays on a TV, phone or console without any of that, M2TS to MP4 is the pragmatic choice.

Should I use AV1 or HEVC for archiving camcorder footage?

AV1 compresses harder and has no licensing questions hanging over personal use, but encodes slowly and decodes on fewer devices. HEVC is faster to encode and is hardware-decoded on most phones and TVs from the last decade — M2TS to HEVC is the middle ground. Both outputs here are Matroska-wrapped under their codec-named extension, so the renaming advice applies to either.

Are my camcorder files kept after conversion?

No. Your M2TS is 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.