MTS to HEVC Converter

How to Convert MTS to HEVC Online

1. Upload Your MTS Files: Drag and drop one or more .mts (or renamed .m2ts) clips from your Sony, Panasonic, Canon, or JVC camcorder. Batch upload is supported, so a whole afternoon of vacation footage can be queued in one pass.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: Default is "Very High (Recommended)" — visually transparent for camcorder source. Switch to "Highest" for archival masters, "High" or "Medium" for streaming-friendly files, or use Specific file size, Constant Bitrate, Variable Bitrate, Constant Quality, or Constraint Quality if you want direct control over CRF or target Mbps.
3. Resize or Trim (Optional): Under Resolution, choose Keep original (recommended for camcorder masters), pick a Preset Resolution from 4320p down to 144p, scale by Resolution Percentage, or enter a custom Width × Height. Use the Time Range trim to extract a clip from a long recording — start time and duration accept seconds or HH:MM:SS.sss.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared.

The video codec defaults to H.265 (HEVC) and audio to AAC. Under Advanced settings you can swap in H.264, AV1, VP9, MPEG-2, and other codecs if a downstream device requires them.

Why Convert MTS to HEVC?

MTS is the on-camera filename used by AVCHD, the consumer HD camcorder format Sony and Panasonic introduced in 2006. Inside the MPEG-2 Transport Stream wrapper sits H.264/AVC video plus Dolby AC-3 or linear PCM audio, recorded at up to 24 Mbit/s for standard AVCHD or 28 Mbit/s for AVCHD Progressive (1080p50/60). HEVC (H.265) is the standardized successor to H.264 and typically reaches the same perceived quality at roughly 40-50% lower bitrate, which is why re-encoding old camcorder libraries to HEVC is one of the most common consumer transcoding jobs.

• Camcorder archive shrink — A wedding-day Handycam card with two hours of 1080p AVCHD at ~22 Mbit/s averages around 19 GB. Re-encoded to HEVC at "Very High" the same footage typically lands near 9-11 GB with no visible loss, which is the difference between "fits on a USB stick" and "fits on a Blu-ray."
• Editing on modern NLEs — Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, and DaVinci Resolve all import HEVC natively in current releases, while AVCHD/MTS still trips up some plugins and proxy workflows because of its segmented .mts chapter structure.
• Apple ecosystem playback — iOS 11+ and macOS High Sierra (10.13) and later play HEVC natively, including hardware-accelerated decode on A9 chips and newer. AirPlay to an Apple TV from an HEVC file just works; raw .mts usually does not.
• Cloud storage and sharing — Google Drive, iCloud, and Dropbox preview HEVC inline; many of them refuse to thumbnail or stream .mts at all, forcing a download-then-play loop.
• NAS and Plex libraries — Plex direct-streams HEVC to recent Apple TV, Shield, Roku, and Fire TV devices but often has to transcode AVCHD on the fly because of the MPEG-TS container, costing CPU on the server.
• Future-proofing for 4K — If you upgrade to a 4K camera, your library codec is already HEVC; mixing HEVC clips with newer XAVC HS or iPhone HEVC footage on the same timeline avoids unnecessary recompression.

MTS / AVCHD vs HEVC — Format Comparison

Quality Preset Cheat Sheet

Numbers are typical results on 1080p AVCHD source at ~20 Mbit/s and vary with motion complexity and resolution.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much smaller will my HEVC file be than the original MTS?

For 1080p AVCHD source at "Very High (Recommended)," expect 40-50% of the original size. A 4 GB MTS clip typically lands at 1.6-2.4 GB. High-motion footage (sports, wind in trees) compresses less efficiently and can come out closer to 60% of source.

Will I lose quality re-encoding lossy MTS to lossy HEVC?

Yes, in theory — both H.264 and H.265 are lossy, so any transcode introduces some generation loss. In practice, at "Very High" or "Highest" the loss is below the perceptual threshold for normal viewing on a 1080p screen. If you plan to grade, composite, or re-edit the footage, pick "Highest" for an archival master before re-distributing.

Why does my AVCHD camera split a long recording into multiple MTS files?

AVCHD chunks every recording into roughly 2 GB segments because the original spec targeted FAT32 SD cards, which cap files at 4 GB. xConvert converts each segment independently — upload all the chunks in one batch and they'll convert in parallel. To rejoin them into a single timeline before sharing, import the converted files into your editor (iMovie, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve) and export as a single clip.

Should I keep .mts as the output container, or use MP4 / MKV?

xConvert's HEVC output uses the .hevc raw stream by default; for most viewers MP4 or MOV is friendlier. If you need a playable container, run the source through MTS to MP4 or MTS to MOV with HEVC selected as the video codec. MKV is ideal for archival and Plex; MP4 is best for AirDrop, iMessage, and most TVs.

Will Windows 10 / 11 play the HEVC file I get back?

Windows 10 and 11 ship with H.265 decode in the OS but require the "HEVC Video Extensions" Microsoft Store add-on to actually use it inside Movies & TV and Edge. Microsoft sells it for $0.99; some OEM-licensed PCs (Dell, HP, Lenovo with HEVC-capable GPUs) get the device-manufacturer build for free. VLC, MPV, and MPC-HC play HEVC on Windows without any extension.

What's the difference between .mts and .m2ts?

They contain the same AVCHD MPEG-TS payload. Sony's spec uses .mts for files written directly by the camcorder and .m2ts after they're imported to a computer or burned to a Blu-ray Disc. Renaming one to the other is safe and lossless — xConvert accepts either. For .m2ts source see M2TS to HEVC if available, otherwise rename to .mts and use this page.

Can I switch the audio codec away from AAC?

Yes. AAC is the default because it pairs well with HEVC in MP4/MOV and is universally supported. Under Advanced settings you can keep AC-3 (preserves the original AVCHD audio without re-encoding the soundtrack), or pick MP3, Opus, FLAC, or Linear PCM depending on the target.

How long does an HEVC encode take versus H.264?

HEVC's encoder is computationally heavier — expect roughly 2-4× the encode time of an equivalent-quality H.264 encode at the same preset on the same hardware. xConvert runs on our servers, so wall-clock time depends on your CPU; an hour of 1080p AVCHD typically completes in 10-30 minutes on a modern laptop. For faster turnaround, drop to "High" or "Medium" or pick H.264 instead via MTS to MP4.

Will HEVC play on older devices?

HEVC has hardware-accelerated decode on iPhone 6s and newer, all Apple Silicon Macs, Intel 7th-gen Core (2017) and newer, AMD Ryzen, NVIDIA GTX 950 / GeForce 10 series and newer, recent Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, and Android 5.0+. Pre-2017 PCs and TVs may stutter or refuse playback. If you need universal compatibility, convert to H.264 instead via MTS to MP4.