PEF to MTS Converter

PEF or MTS — Which Do You Actually Want?

A Pentax .pef is a raw photo — the undeveloped sensor readout from a K-series body. An .MTS is the opposite kind of thing: a finished AVCHD video clip, the transport-stream format Sony and Panasonic camcorders record to. Converting one to the other does not "open a raw in a video editor" — it renders your PEF to a single still frame and holds that motionless frame on screen for a set time, producing a silent, static clip. There is exactly one good reason to do that: you are feeding a still into an older AVCHD editing or disc-authoring timeline that only ingests .mts footage. If you just want a viewable picture, convert PEF to JPG instead — that is what almost everyone searching for this actually needs.

PEF vs MTS: Side by Side

When to Keep the PEF (or Render It to a Photo)

• You still want to adjust white balance, exposure, highlight recovery, or the Pentax Custom Image tone — those live in the raw, not in any rendered frame.
• You want a viewable, shareable picture: render PEF to JPG for universal compatibility, or PEF to AVIF for a smaller modern web image.
• You are archiving the master and want the original sensor data intact for future re-editing — keep the .pef (or its in-camera DNG twin), which holds the same data either way.
• You plan to import the photo into a modern editor (Premiere, Resolve, Final Cut) — those take a JPEG or TIFF still directly and do not need an .mts wrapper.

When to Convert PEF to MTS

• You are building a project in an older AVCHD editor or Blu-ray/AVCHD-disc authoring tool that only ingests .mts transport-stream clips, and you need to drop in a still — a title card, a slate, a Pentax photograph.
• You want that still to sit on the timeline as a clip of a fixed length rather than as an imported image asset.
• Your authoring template specifically expects the .MTS extension and the H.264-in-transport-stream layout that AVCHD camcorders produce.

MTS (AVCHD) Format at a Glance

How to Convert PEF to MTS

1. Upload Your PEF File: Drag and drop your Pentax .pef onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse — straight off a K-series body, and you can queue several frames at once.
2. Set Image Duration: Open the Image Duration control and pick how long the rendered frame is held — from a single frame up to 10 seconds per frame; the default is 5 seconds. Use Merge strategy to choose "Merge images" (one combined clip) or "Video per image" (a separate .mts per photo).
3. Set Quality Preset, Video resolution, and Background Color: Leave Quality Preset on "Very High (Recommended)", set Video resolution to "Keep original" or a fixed 1920x1080 preset, and pick a Background Color (default White) to pad any letterboxed area. The Video Codec defaults to H.264, which is what AVCHD tools expect.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save your silent .MTS clip. No sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I convert my PEF straight to MTS, or render it to a photo first?

For almost every workflow, render it to a photo first. The standard way to get a Pentax still onto a video timeline is to convert PEF to JPG (or a lossless TIFF) and import that image into your editor, which then lets you set its on-screen duration, add motion, and place it freely. Going straight to .MTS only makes sense when the editing or disc-authoring tool is an older AVCHD pipeline that will not import a still at all and only accepts .mts transport-stream clips. If that is not your situation, the photo route gives you more control and a far smaller, more compatible file.

What happens to all the raw latitude in my PEF when it becomes a video frame?

It is spent at the render step. To place a PEF into any video frame, the converter must demosaic the Pentax sensor data and bake in a white balance, exposure, and the Custom Image tone — the way a raw developer applies them — because transport-stream video has no concept of undeveloped raw data. PEF is a TIFF-based container holding roughly 12- or 14-bit unprocessed sensor data; the frame inside the .MTS is a finished 8-bit H.264 video frame, so the recoverable highlights, shadows, and adjustable white balance of the raw are no longer freely editable in the clip. Develop the raw first if you want that control, and keep the original .pef (or its DNG twin) as your master.

Will the MTS clip have any motion or sound?

No on both counts. The PEF is rendered to one still frame, and that single frame is held on screen for the duration you set — so it plays as a frozen clip with no pans, zooms, or transitions. It is also silent: a still image carries no audio track, so there is nothing to encode, even though AVCHD itself supports Dolby AC-3 and linear PCM audio. If you upload several PEFs and choose "Merge images" under Merge strategy, they join back to back — each shown in turn for its set duration — which is a sequence of stills, not a cross-faded slideshow. Add narration, music, or movement on the editing timeline after you import the clip.

My K-series body is high-megapixel — what resolution does the MTS clip end up?

Lower than the raw, in practice. Pentax K-series sensors in the roughly 6-to-36-megapixel class capture far more pixels than a video frame holds, so leaving Video resolution on "Keep original" still produces a video-sized frame rather than a poster-sized one, and choosing the 1920x1080 preset downscales the rendered image to fit 1080p. Detail beyond the chosen frame is discarded — that is normal for putting a high-resolution photo into video. If preserving every pixel matters, keep the still as an image with PEF to JPG or a lossless PEF to TIFF rather than wrapping it in video.

Is MTS the same as M2TS, and which one does this output?

Same encoded video, different packet framing — and this tool outputs .MTS. AVCHD camcorders use that spelling, while computers and Blu-ray discs use .m2ts, and the extension decides how the transport stream is written: .MTS comes out as plain 188-byte packets beginning with the 0x47 sync byte, whereas PEF to M2TS writes BDAV 192-byte packets that each prefix a 4-byte timestamp header and produce a slightly larger file. Renaming one to the other relabels it without re-framing the packets, so convert to whichever extension your AVCHD-era editor or authoring template expects. For an .mts from any image format, not just Pentax raw, see Image to MTS.

Why convert a PEF to MTS instead of MP4?

Only an AVCHD-era pipeline justifies it. If you are working in an older editor or disc-authoring tool that ingests .mts transport-stream footage and you need a still on that timeline, an .MTS clip slots in without a re-wrap. For every other purpose, PEF to MP4 carries the same kind of H.264 video in a smaller, far more portable file that plays on phones, browsers, TVs, and ordinary editors. And if you only want a viewable picture rather than a video at all, render PEF to JPG instead.

Will an AVCHD editor or disc-authoring tool accept this MTS?

Usually, when the timeline settings match. AVCHD tools expect H.264 video in a transport stream at standard frame sizes, so setting Video resolution to 1920x1080 (or 1440x1080) gives the best chance of a clean import; an unusual custom size can be refused by a strict AVCHD authoring template. Because the source is a single still, the clip is silent — some disc-authoring tools prefer an audio track to be present, so if yours rejects a silent clip, add a short silent or music track on the timeline after import. If the tool accepts ordinary H.264 video, PEF to MP4 is simpler and more portable.

How are my files handled, and how long are they kept?

Your PEF is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and wrapped into an .MTS clip on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after conversion — no sign-up, no watermark, and your photos are never shared or made public. In our testing, a single rendered frame held for a few seconds compresses efficiently in H.264, so the .MTS clip stays small; the main practical limit on a big job is upload size and the time it takes to send, since Pentax raws often run tens of megabytes each. For privacy-sensitive originals, keep the .pef locally and convert only the copies you need.