ORF to MTS Converter

ORF to MTS Converter

ORF is Olympus Raw Format — one undeveloped still, straight off the sensor of an Olympus or OM System camera. MTS is the camcorder spelling of an MPEG transport stream, the file type AVCHD camcorders write to card. Converting between them renders your photograph into a single video frame and holds that frame on screen for a duration you choose, producing a silent, motionless clip. There is exactly one good reason to do it: an older AVCHD-era editor or authoring tool that will only ingest .mts and into which you need to drop a still. This page documents precisely what the resulting file is, because "MTS" carries assumptions about AVCHD that our output does not fully satisfy. 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 or made public.

ORF Format at a Glance

What the .mts This Page Writes Actually Is

How to Convert ORF to MTS

1. Upload Your ORF File: Drop your .orf files on the page or click "+ Add Files". Merge strategy is set to "Merge images", so several photos become one clip played in sequence; choose "Video per image" for a separate .mts each.
2. Leave the Video Codec on H.264: That is the selected value and the one AVCHD-era tools expect. Avoid MPEG-1 here — stills encode at 1 fps, which MPEG-1's fixed frame-rate table does not allow, so that combination fails before encoding starts.
3. Set Image Duration, Video resolution, and Background Color: Image Duration is on 5 seconds per frame and runs from a single frame at 60 fps up to 10 seconds. Video resolution starts on "Keep original" and also offers fixed width x height pairs, height-only presets, and your own dimensions. Background Color defaults to White and fills any letterbox bars.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the silent .mts. File Compression offers Quality Preset (Very High selected), Constant Quality, and Constraint Quality; the bitrate and file-size modes are hidden for image sources. No sign-up, no watermark.

Where This Differs From Real AVCHD

AVCHD, introduced by Sony and Panasonic in 2006, is a whole delivery specification: a defined folder tree, transport packets carrying an arrival-timestamp prefix, and an audio track in Dolby AC-3 or linear PCM. What this page produces is the video part of that idea and not the rest.

The output is a bare stream file rather than a disc structure — there is no BDMV directory, no STREAM folder, no playlist. Its packets use the plain 188-byte layout rather than the 192-byte timestamped form, because ffmpeg selects that framing from the output extension and reserves the timestamped variant for .m2ts. And it has no audio at all, which sidesteps the fact that our usual AAC default is not an AVCHD-legal audio codec anyway.

None of that stops an editor from importing the clip, because editors read the elementary streams inside. It does mean you should not expect the file to be recognised by a camcorder, written back to a card, or accepted by disc-authoring software that validates a full AVCHD structure. If your tool wants the timestamped framing, ORF to M2TS is the target that produces it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the .mts file from this page a genuine AVCHD file?

Not in the strict sense. It carries H.264 video in an MPEG transport stream, which is the core of AVCHD, but it lacks the surrounding specification: no BDMV folder structure, no AVCHD-legal audio track, and plain 188-byte packets instead of the timestamped 192-byte packets that AVCHD uses. Editing software that reads the stream directly will import it happily; camcorders and strict disc-authoring tools will not.

Why does the clip have no sound when AVCHD supports audio?

Because the source does. A photograph contains no audio data, so the pipeline hides the audio codec group entirely on image sources rather than writing an empty track. AVCHD itself carries Dolby AC-3 or linear PCM, but there is nothing in an ORF to put in either. Add music or narration on the editing timeline after you import the clip.

What is the difference between .mts, .m2ts, and .ts here?

All three are MPEG transport streams, and the extension decides the packet framing. .m2ts gets 192-byte packets — a 188-byte transport packet with a four-byte arrival timestamp in front — which is the layout Blu-ray and AVCHD use. .mts and .ts both get the plain 188-byte layout. If your tool specifically wants the timestamped form, use ORF to M2TS; ORF to TS writes the same plain stream as this page under a more generic name.

Which video codec should I leave selected?

H.264, which is already selected and is what AVCHD-era software expects to find inside a .mts. The menu also offers DivX, H.265, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and Xvid. Steer clear of MPEG-1 on this page: stills are encoded at 1 fps, MPEG-1's frame-rate table has no entry for that, and the encoder refuses to start.

Does my 20-megapixel Olympus raw keep all its pixels in the clip?

No. Before encoding, each image is re-rendered to a PNG capped at 4096 pixels on the long edge, so a 5184 x 3888 OM-1 frame arrives at roughly 4096 x 3072 even with Video resolution on "Keep original", and any resolution you set scales it further. If retaining every pixel is the point, keep the photo as a photo — ORF to JPG or ORF to TIFF.

What fills the frame if my 4:3 photo goes into a widescreen output?

Background Color, which defaults to White on image sources and offers 26 choices including Black. A Four Thirds frame is 4:3, so pushing it into a 16:9 preset leaves filled pillars on the left and right. Pick Black if the clip is going into a dark timeline, or choose a 4:3 output size and avoid the bars entirely.

Will the clip have any motion, and what happens if I upload several photos?

No motion — the raw becomes one still frame, held for the duration you set, with no pan, zoom, or crossfade. Uploading several ORFs with Merge strategy on "Merge images" gives you a single file in which each photo holds for its duration and cuts hard to the next. That is a sequence of stills rather than an edited slideshow; transitions have to come from your editor.

What happens to my ORF and the finished clip after conversion?

Both are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No account is required, nothing is watermarked, and your photos are never shared or made public. Olympus raws run tens of megabytes each, so upload time is the real constraint on a big batch rather than the encoding itself. The ORF converter hub lists every other target.