MTS to OGV Converter

MTS to OGV Converter

This page takes the .mts files an AVCHD camcorder writes — Sony, Panasonic, Canon, and JVC all produce them — and re-encodes them into .ogv, the Ogg container used for video. It is a conversion between two formats built for opposite purposes: AVCHD is a patent-licensed recording format designed to get high-bitrate HD onto a memory card, while Ogg is the Xiph.Org Foundation's royalty-free container that carried open-source video through the years before H.264 became universal.

That history matters for setting expectations. If you are here because a legacy open-source toolchain, an archive policy, or an old HTML5 fallback path names .ogv explicitly, this is the right tool. If you are here because you want camcorder footage to play in a browser, .ogv is no longer that format — MTS to WebM is the modern royalty-free target and MTS to MP4 is the universally playable one. The browser-support row in the second table below is the reason.

MTS (AVCHD) at a Glance

Source: the official AVCHD format specification.

OGV (Ogg Video) at a Glance

Browser support figures are from caniuse's Ogg/Theora entry. Note that those figures describe Theora in Ogg. A VP8 video stream inside an Ogg container is an unusual pairing that browsers were never built to expect, so an .ogv from this tool is less likely to play in a browser than a Theora one — which itself no longer plays in most of them.

What This Converter Actually Produces

The defaults are VP8 video with Vorbis audio. VP8 is the deliberate choice: it is meaningfully more efficient than Theora and equally royalty-free, so unless something specifically demands classic Theora-in-Ogg you should leave it alone. The rate-control controls behave differently from codec to codec, and on VP8 one of them does nothing at all:

Selecting Theora instead reshapes the panel: the Constant Quality field re-ranges from 16-63 to Theora's own 0-10 scale, and Constraint Quality disappears entirely. That is another reason to stay on VP8 and steer with Quality Preset or an explicit bitrate.

How to Convert MTS to OGV

1. Upload Your MTS File: Drag the .mts clip onto the page or pick it with the file browser. Batches convert with the same settings. This page accepts the .mts extension only, so rename a .m2ts copy or use M2TS to OGV instead.
2. Leave Video Codec on VP8 and Audio Codec on Vorbis: Those are the defaults and the right pair for a general-purpose .ogv. Switch Video Codec to Theora only if a specific legacy consumer requires it; Audio Codec also offers Opus, Speex, and FLAC.
3. Set File Compression and Video resolution: Use Quality Preset, Constant Bitrate, or Specific file size rather than Constant Quality, which VP8 ignores. Under Video resolution, Keep original holds the camera's frame size; a Preset Resolution sets height with width following the source aspect.
4. Convert and Download: Start the job and save the .ogv. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically a few hours later — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this actually output Theora, the codec OGV is known for?

Not by default — the Video Codec dropdown opens on VP8, and Theora is the alternative rather than the standard. VP8 is the better engineering choice for the same royalty-free licensing: it is a later design and it holds detail at bitrates where Theora visibly falls apart. Choose Theora deliberately, and only when the software or archive you are feeding names Theora specifically, because a lot of legacy .ogv consumers were written when Theora was the only option.

Will an .ogv file play in a browser today?

Realistically, no. Ogg/Theora playback has been disabled by default in Chrome since version 120 — Chromium removed the decoder in 123 — and in Opera since version 106, Firefox disabled it by default at version 126, and Safari never had it. On top of that, this tool's default video codec is VP8, and VP8 inside an Ogg container is a pairing browsers were never designed to handle — the browsers that do decode VP8 expect it in WebM. If browser playback is the actual requirement, convert to MTS to WebM instead; it is the same royalty-free philosophy with codecs that are still shipping.

Why doesn't the Constant Quality slider change my output?

Because VP8 has no constant-quality mode in this pipeline, and the Constant Quality path does not fall back to a bitrate either — the result is that neither a quality target nor a rate is handed to the encoder, so libvpx uses its own built-in default regardless of what the field says. Every value produces the same file. Use Quality Preset if you want a simple control, Constant Bitrate or Custom Bitrate if you want a specific rate, or Constraint Quality, which on VP8 does pass its max-bitrate figure through as the target.

What happens to the camcorder's Dolby AC-3 audio?

It is decoded and re-encoded — Ogg does not carry AC-3, and nothing here copies streams through untouched. The default destination is Vorbis, the Ogg family's long-standing lossy audio codec, which is what a legacy .ogv consumer will expect to find. AVCHD recordings that used Linear PCM instead go through the same re-encode. If the source track is multichannel, be aware that you are asking a lossy encoder to handle a surround mix; check the result before deleting the original.

Should I choose Vorbis, Opus, Speex, or FLAC for the audio?

Vorbis unless you have a reason otherwise: it is the codec anything expecting an .ogv will be able to decode. Opus is technically the better codec — more quality per bit at nearly every rate — but a legacy player that only ever learned Vorbis will not read it, which defeats the point of choosing OGV in the first place. Speex is an older Xiph speech codec that Opus superseded; there is little reason to pick it now. FLAC is lossless, so it will not throw away any more of the audio, at the cost of a much larger file than the video track deserves.

Will converting H.264 to VP8 lose picture quality?

Yes, and the direction of travel makes it worse than a typical transcode: you are going from a more efficient codec to a less efficient one. H.264 in your MTS holds a given picture in fewer bits than VP8 needs for the same result, so either the file grows or the quality drops. Two things help. Keep Quality Preset high, which scales the target rate up from the source's own bitrate rather than guessing. And keep the original .mts — a lossy re-encode is not reversible, and if the .ogv turns out to be the wrong destination you want the master to try again from.

Does converting to OGV deinterlace 1080i camcorder footage?

No. There is no deinterlacing anywhere in this pipeline, under any setting or preset. If your AVCHD clips were recorded 1080i, each frame carries two fields shot a moment apart, and the horizontal combing on moving subjects is encoded straight into the OGV exactly as it exists in the source. Neither VP8 nor Theora has interlaced coding tools either, so the woven picture simply becomes the picture. Deinterlacing needs a desktop tool with a dedicated filter; no setting on this page substitutes for it.

Is OGV or WebM the right open format to standardise on?

WebM, for anything new. Both come from the same royalty-free tradition, but WebM is the container the VP8, VP9, and AV1 codecs were actually designed to travel in, and it has real support in current browsers and devices. OGV's value now is backward compatibility: systems, scripts, and archives written in the Theora era that check for .ogv and will not accept anything else. If that describes your situation, this is the right page. If it does not, MTS to WebM will give you a smaller file that more things can play.

How large a file can I convert, and what happens to my upload?

There is no fixed per-file limit; upload size and connection speed are the real constraints, and AVCHD is heavy — up to 24 Mbps means a long recording runs to several gigabytes before conversion starts. Cutting out the part you need first with Video Cutter is usually quicker than uploading the whole clip. Everything you send travels over an encrypted connection, is processed on our servers, and is deleted automatically a few hours after the job completes. Files are never shared or made public, and there is no sign-up and no watermark.