MTS to MPG Converter

MPG or MP4 — What Should Camcorder Footage Actually Become?

People convert .mts to .mpg for one of two very different reasons, and the right settings depend entirely on which one you are. Either something old and specific demands it — a DVD authoring package, a set-top recorder, a kiosk or signage player, a school or council system whose upload form lists MPG and nothing else — or the file simply refuses to open and MPG was the first familiar extension that came to mind. If you are in the second group, stop here: MTS to MP4 is smaller, sharper, and plays on everything you own.

If you are in the first group, this page does the job properly. MPG is the MPEG program stream, carrying MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video — MPEG-2 video was standardised jointly as ITU-T H.262 and ISO/IEC in 1995, three decades of installed hardware ago. Your source is the opposite end of that history: AVCHD, which the format specification defines as H.264 video with Dolby Digital or Linear PCM audio in a transport stream, at up to 24 Mbps. Going from one to the other is a deliberate downgrade in codec efficiency that buys you compatibility.

Side-by-side Comparison

When MPG Is the Right Answer

• You are feeding DVD-authoring software, which needs MPEG-2 at a standard-definition frame size.
• A capture card, set-top recorder, or hardware player from the DVD era is the playback target.
• An editing suite predating H.264 has to open the footage on a timeline.
• An institutional upload or archive system lists MPG among its accepted formats and will not take MP4.

When to Pick Something Else

• For phones, browsers, or smart TVs, convert to MTS to MP4 — H.264 in a modern container, no efficiency penalty, universal playback.
• For an actual DVD disc structure rather than a loose file, MTS to VOB produces the object a disc layout is built from.
• For open-format archives or a web page, MTS to WebM is the royalty-free target with real browser support.
• For the soundtrack only, MTS to MP3 skips the video question entirely.

How to Convert MTS to MPG

1. Upload Your MTS File: Drag the clip onto the page or choose it with the file browser. This page accepts the .mts extension only — if your copy is named .m2ts, rename it or use M2TS to MPG instead, since the two spellings usually hold the identical stream.
2. Confirm Video Codec and Audio Codec: Video Codec opens on MPEG-2; leave it there unless you specifically need MPEG-1. Audio Codec opens on MP2, with AC3, MP3, and DTS (DCA) available.
3. Set Video resolution and a Bitrate: For a disc, choose Width x Height and type exact pixels — the Preset Resolutions list sets height only, so it will not give you a 720-wide frame. Then pick Constant Bitrate or Variable Bitrate and enter a real number rather than using a quality slider.
4. Convert and Download: Start the job and save the .mpg. Your file is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours later — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public.

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Inside the MPG

That last row is the practical difference most people hit. With MPEG-2 selected, the Constant Quality and Constraint Quality modes render a numeric field but the number is dropped and replaced by a bitrate derived from your output frame size, so those two modes cannot be used to steer quality. With MPEG-1 selected, the same field is applied as a quantiser — but it does not open at a value that suits a 1-31 scale, so set it deliberately: roughly 2 to 5 is high quality, and the picture degrades quickly above about 10.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is .mpg the same thing as .mpeg?

Yes — same format, same bytes, different extension length. The three-letter form dates from the era when Windows filenames were limited to a three-character extension, and both names have been used interchangeably for MPEG program streams ever since. Renaming an .mpg to .mpeg or back changes nothing about the file. If your destination insists on the longer spelling, MTS to MPEG is this same conversion with that extension on the output.

Should I pick MPEG-1 or MPEG-2?

MPEG-2, unless something has named MPEG-1 specifically. MPEG-2 is more efficient, it is the codec DVD-Video requires, and it has the interlaced coding tools that camcorder footage frequently needs — MPEG-1 was designed for progressive video and predates all of that. The realistic reasons to choose MPEG-1 are Video CD authoring and a small number of very old players and capture systems that never learned MPEG-2. There is one quirk worth knowing in the other direction: the Constant Quality control actually functions with MPEG-1 selected, whereas MPEG-2 discards it.

Will an old DVD player or a TV's USB port play the MPG I make?

Most set-top DVD players have no file playback at all — they read a disc structure, not loose files on a stick. TVs with USB media playback are the more likely target, and MPEG-2 in a program stream is one of the formats they most often support, so the odds are good. Two things break it in practice: a full-HD frame size on a player expecting standard definition, and an audio track it cannot decode. If a TV rejects the file, re-run at 720x480 or 720x576 with MP2 audio before assuming the format is wrong.

Will the MPG play in a browser or on my phone?

No, and this is the single most common disappointment with this conversion. No current browser decodes MPEG-2 in a program stream, and phones do not play .mpg without a third-party player app. MPG is a compatibility format for old hardware and old software, not for modern devices. If your goal is footage you can text, email, or embed on a page, convert to MTS to MP4 — or MTS to WebM if you need a royalty-free codec for the web.

Can the MPG stay at 1080p, or does it have to be standard definition?

It can stay full HD. MPEG-2 handles high definition perfectly well — it is the codec HDV camcorders recorded and the one Blu-ray still permits — so leaving Video resolution on Keep original produces a 1920x1080 MPEG-2 program stream. Standard definition is only mandatory when DVD-Video authoring is the destination, because the disc format itself is standard definition. The trade-off for keeping HD is size: the encoder enforces a minimum bitrate that scales with frame area, so a 1080p MPEG-2 file is a large file by design.

What bitrate should I set for MPEG-2?

Work from the frame size. At 720x480 or 720x576 the encoder will not go below 2 Mbps, and roughly 4 to 6 Mbps is where standard-definition MPEG-2 stops looking soft on real footage. At 1920x1080 the enforced minimum rises to about 7.5 Mbps, and you generally want 12 to 20 Mbps before HD MPEG-2 looks comparable to the AVCHD source it came from — which is not unreasonable, given AVCHD itself records at up to 24 Mbps. Enter those in Constant Bitrate for a predictable rate, or Variable Bitrate if you want the encoder to spend more on busy scenes.

Why do older programs open an MPG when they choke on the original MTS?

Two separate barriers. The first is the container: .mts is an MPEG-2 transport stream, a format designed to be broadcast or streamed, with error-resilience framing that older desktop software was never written to demultiplex. The second is the codec: H.264 arrived after a lot of that software shipped, so even if it parsed the container it could not decode the picture. An MPG solves both at once — a program stream is the layout desktop software of that era expects, and MPEG-2 is the codec it was built around.

Are my camcorder files kept after conversion?

No. Your upload travels over an encrypted connection, is processed on our servers, and is deleted automatically a few hours after the job finishes; the converted MPG goes the same way. Files are never shared or made public, there is no sign-up, and nothing is watermarked. There is no fixed per-file cap either — what limits you is upload size and connection speed, and AVCHD at up to 24 Mbps adds up fast, so trimming the section you need with Video Cutter before uploading is often the quickest route to a finished file.