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Need help?How to Convert MOS to Any Video Format
- Upload Your MOS File: Drag and drop your
.mosonto the page or click "+ Add Files". Leaf medium-format raws are large, so the upload is the part you will wait on; queue several and they convert with the same settings. - Choose the Output Format and Duration: Pick a container from the Video File Extension list — 32 targets are offered, from MP4 and MOV through WebM, MKV and AVI to broadcast and legacy formats. Then set Image Duration, which decides how long the still is held and therefore the length of the clip; it defaults to 5 seconds per frame.
- Adjust Quality, Background and Resolution (Optional): Quality Preset starts on Very High (Recommended), Background Color on White, and Video resolution on Keep original. The Video Codec list stays empty until you have chosen an output format, because which codecs are legal depends on the container you picked.
- Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the file. Everything uploads over an encrypted connection, is processed on our servers, and is deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.
Popular MOS Video Conversions
- MOS to MP4 — the safe default: H.264 in the container phones, browsers, editors and TVs all accept
- MOS to MOV — QuickTime, for Final Cut Pro and Apple-centric editing workflows
- MOS to WebM — VP9, for embedding the still as a clip on a web page
- MOS to MKV — Matroska, for desktop players and archival muxing
- MOS to M4V — the Apple-flavoured MP4 variant iTunes and Apple TV expect
- MOS to AVI — legacy pipelines and older Windows software that will not take anything newer
- MOS to HEVC — H.265 for an ingest specification that insists on it
If a still image is not what you wanted from this raw at all, the MOS converter hub covers every image target instead. To turn photographs in other formats into clips, Image to Video accepts JPG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF and a long list of other raw formats alongside MOS.
Why Turn a MOS Photograph Into Video?
MOS is the raw capture file from Leaf medium-format digital backs — the Aptus and Aptus-II series, 22 to 80 megapixels, written as undeveloped sensor data in a TIFF-derived container by a company that was a division of Scitex, then Kodak, and is now part of Phase One. It is a photograph, not footage, so every conversion on this page produces a clip that holds one developed frame.
That sounds like a strange thing to want until you hit one of the cases where it is the only option:
- A hero still needs to go on a timeline. Editors handle a video file more predictably than a still, especially for duration, transitions and rendering, and a raw file most of them cannot open at all.
- A platform accepts video but not raw, and sometimes not stills either. Encoding the frame as a short clip is the shortest route past an upload form that will only take MP4.
- A display or signage system loops video. A five-second clip of a single image is a perfectly ordinary way to feed one.
- An archive or ingest specification names a container. Broadcast and preservation workflows often mandate MXF, MPEG-2 or an MPEG-TS variant regardless of what the source was.
- You want a slideshow. Upload several
.mosfiles and the Merge strategy control — set to Merge images by default — strings them into one clip, each frame held for the duration you chose. Video per image gives you separate files instead.
What none of these change is the underlying trade: developing the raw bakes in white balance, exposure and tone, and encoding to video discards most of the resolution on top. Keep the .mos as your master.
What Each Container Actually Gives You
Several of the 32 targets do not produce quite what their extension implies. These are the ones worth knowing before you pick:
| Output format | What you actually get |
|---|---|
| MP4, M4V, MOV | H.264 video in the container you named — the broadly compatible choices |
| WebM | VP9 video; OGV gets VP8 |
| MKV | A genuine Matroska file |
| HEVC, AV1 | A Matroska container carrying that codec, under a .hevc or .av1 name — rename to .mkv for players to recognise it |
| XVID, DIVX | AVI bytes under a .xvid or .divx name — rename to .avi |
| AVCHD | MPEG-TS bytes under an .avchd name; a single file, not a disc folder structure |
| M2TS | BDAV framing with 192-byte packets, while TS and MTS get plain 188-byte transport packets |
| MPEG2 | An MPEG program stream |
| MXF | All-intra encoding with a GOP of 1, which makes files substantially larger |
What Every MOS-to-Video Conversion Has in Common
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Motion | None — a raw photograph has no frames to move between |
| Audio | None; the audio controls are hidden entirely for image sources |
| Frame rate | 1 frame per second, with B-frames disabled |
| Clip length | Set by Image Duration; 5 seconds by default, up to 10 seconds per frame |
| Image size before encoding | Capped at 4096 pixels on the long edge |
| Background fill | White by default, from a list of 25 colours |
| Video resolution default | Keep original |
| Rate-control modes | Quality Preset, Constant Quality and Constraint Quality only |
| Merge strategy default | Merge images |
Frequently Asked Questions
Which output format is selected when I open this page?
None is preselected for you — the Video File Extension list is a genuine choice on this page rather than a default you are nudged away from. Pick MP4 if you have no specific requirement; it plays essentially everywhere and uses H.264. Everything else on the list exists for a particular downstream system, and if you do not have one, you do not need it.
Why is the Video Codec list empty?
Because which codecs are legal depends on the container, and you have not chosen one yet. Select an output format first and the codec list populates with the options that container supports. MP4 and MOV get H.264 by default, WebM gets VP9, and the HEVC target is fixed to H.265.
Will the video have any motion or sound?
No to both, and neither is a limitation you can work around here. A MOS is one photograph: there is no second frame to move to, and no audio was ever recorded. The clip holds your developed frame for the duration you set. To build something that moves, upload multiple .mos files and let Merge images assemble them — though that is a slideshow of stills, not recovered footage.
Why does my 80-megapixel frame come out looking so much smaller?
Every image is capped at 4096 pixels on the long edge before encoding, which already takes a top-end Leaf frame well below its native size, and your Video resolution choice applies after that. The cap is not adjustable. Video codecs and containers were designed around broadcast and streaming resolutions, not medium-format stills, so if the pixel count is what you care about, use an image target such as MOS to PNG or MOS to TIFF.
Can I set a target file size?
Not on this page. For image sources every file-size and bitrate-based rate-control mode is hidden, leaving Quality Preset, Constant Quality and Constraint Quality. Constraint Quality is the practical substitute: it exposes a Max bitrate field, and because you also control the duration, bitrate multiplied by seconds gives you a reliable ceiling on the finished file.
Why is there a white border around my photograph?
Background Color defaults to White for image sources and fills whatever padding the output frame needs. Medium-format backs shoot close to square or 4:3, so a 16:9 output pads the sides. Choose a different colour, pick a resolution matching your frame's proportions, or leave Video resolution on Keep original and no padding is required.
Does the converter apply my Capture One settings?
No. It performs a neutral raw development — demosaic, as-shot white balance and a standard tone curve — with no profile or recipe of yours attached, and there is no HDR tone-mapping stage, so a deliberately protected highlight may still clip. For colour-critical work, develop in Capture One or Lightroom, export a rendered file, and convert that instead of the raw.
What happens to my MOS file after conversion?
It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, developed and encoded on our servers, and both the uploaded raw and the finished video are deleted automatically after a few hours. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing you upload is shared or made public.