PSD to TS Converter

PSD to TS: What This Tutorial Covers

A .psd is a layered, editable Photoshop document. A .ts is an MPEG transport stream — the packetised container broadcast and streaming systems ingest, and the format a lot of playout, signage and HLS pipelines will accept and nothing else. Turning one into the other means rendering the Photoshop file to a single picture and holding that picture on screen for a fixed number of seconds inside a transport stream.

This walk-through covers what actually gets rendered out of the PSD (it is not quite "your layers"), which of the seven video codecs on the page produce a working file, what the output measures, and the one codec choice that fails outright every time. Read the codec section before you convert — the failure is silent enough to waste a round trip.

How to Convert PSD to TS

1. Upload Your PSD File: Drag the .psd onto the page or click "Add Files". You can queue several; Merge strategy opens on Merge images, which joins them into one clip in order, and Video per image writes a separate .ts for each instead.
2. Set Image Duration and Background Color: Image Duration opens at 5 seconds and ranges from a single frame at 60 fps up to 10 seconds per image. Background Color decides what fills any transparent area of your artwork — it opens on White, and the full list runs to 25 entries including Black and 23 chromatic colours.
3. Choose a Video Codec and Video resolution: Video Codec offers DivX, H.264 (which the page opens on), H.265, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and Xvid. Do not pick MPEG-1 — the reason is below and it is not a matter of taste. Video resolution opens on Keep original and offers Fixed Resolutions (a list of exact pixel pairs from 256 × 144 up to 8K), Preset Resolutions (heights only, with the width following your artwork's aspect), Width, Height and Width x Height.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .ts. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: What Gets Rendered Out of the PSD

The converter does not re-composite your layer stack. It reads the composite image the PSD file itself stores — the flattened picture Photoshop writes alongside the layer data so that other applications can display the file without understanding Photoshop's internals — and encodes that.

We proved this rather than assuming it. Building a PSD whose stored composite deliberately differed from its layers, we read back the picture the converter's own image stage produces and got the composite: the three coloured regions appeared exactly as the merged image described them, not as any single layer. Building a second PSD with no distinct composite, the same stage returned one layer with the areas the other layers covered coming back fully transparent.

The practical consequences:

• Save with Photoshop's "Maximize Compatibility" option on. That is the setting that writes the composite. Without it, what the converter renders may not be the picture you saw on screen.
• Layers, type, masks, smart objects and adjustment layers do not survive as anything editable — video has no concept of them. Hidden layers stay hidden, exactly as they appear in the composite.
• Transparency is flattened onto the Background Color, which is White unless you change it. We measured a corner that was fully transparent in the PSD arriving as pure white in the video frame. No video codec on this page can store an alpha channel, so this is a fill, not a loss you can undo later.
• Very large artwork is scaled down. The image stage clamps the long edge to 4096 pixels before encoding, so a poster-sized canvas will not reach the encoder at full size.
• The output has no audio track at all. We confirmed the finished .ts contains exactly one stream, and it is video. There is nothing to mute and no audio control to find.

Choosing a Video Codec — and the One That Fails

Because a still image has no motion, every frame in the clip is identical, which is why these files are so small. We encoded the same 1920 × 1080 artwork for five seconds through each codec the page offers and measured the result:

MPEG-1 does not work on this page, and the reason is structural. Image-to-video conversions encode at one frame per second, and there is no frame-rate control anywhere on this page to change that. The MPEG-1 video specification permits only a fixed set of frame rates — 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60 — so the encoder rejects 1 fps outright. We confirmed both halves of that: at 640 × 360 the MPEG-1 encoder refused 1, 2 and 5 frames per second and accepted 24 and 25, and MPEG-2 accepted 1 fps at the same size without complaint. Pick MPEG-2 if you need an MPEG-family codec.

For fidelity, File Compression opens on Quality Preset at Very High, and on a CRF-capable codec such as H.264 or H.265 that preset is translated into a CRF value derived from the codec and the output resolution rather than a fixed number. The bitrate and file-size modes are hidden on image sources — only Quality Preset, Constant Quality (a 16-51 CRF slider) and Constraint Quality render, so do not go looking for a bitrate field.

What the Output Measured

That 188-byte packet layout is worth noting if the destination is a hardware ingest: .ts output is plain transport-stream framing, not the 192-byte BDAV framing a Blu-ray .m2ts uses. Ingests that expect one usually reject the other.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The conversion failed and produced nothing." You selected MPEG-1. The encoder cannot accept the one-frame-per-second rate this conversion uses. Choose MPEG-2, or H.264 for anything modern.
• "My transparent background came out white." That is the Background Color doing its job — it defaults to White. Set it to Black or any of the other entries before converting; you cannot keep the transparency, because no codec here stores alpha.
• "The video does not move." Expected. A PSD is a still image, so the output is that one picture held for the Image Duration. Photoshop timeline animations are not read; use File > Export > Render Video in Photoshop itself for those.
• "The picture is not what I saw in Photoshop." The PSD was probably saved without the compatibility composite. Re-save with "Maximize Compatibility" enabled, or flatten the document first.
• "My huge canvas came back smaller." The long edge is clamped to 4096 pixels before encoding. Resize deliberately in Photoshop if the exact dimensions matter.
• "Colours look dull compared to the PSD." Documents saved in CMYK or Lab for print are converted to the RGB space video requires, and some shift is normal. Convert to sRGB in Photoshop before exporting for the closest match.
• "My player will not open the .ts." Transport streams are an ingest format, not a consumer one. PSD to MP4 produces the same picture in a container that plays everywhere.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the converter use my layers or the flattened image?

The flattened composite that the PSD file itself stores. Photoshop writes that merged picture alongside the layer data so other software can display the document, and it is what the converter reads — we verified it against a PSD deliberately built so its composite differed from its layers, and the composite is what came through. Save with "Maximize Compatibility" enabled so that composite is present and current, or flatten the document before saving.

Why is there no audio, and can I add some?

Because the source is a still image with no sound in it, and nothing in this conversion synthesises a track — we confirmed the finished file contains exactly one stream and it is video. There is no audio control on the page for the same reason. To lay music or narration over the clip, bring the .ts into a video editor afterwards, or produce an MP4 and add audio there.

How long is the clip and how do I make it longer?

Image Duration decides it, and it opens at 5 seconds. The list runs from a single frame at 60 fps at the short end up to 10 seconds per image at the long end. If you upload several PSDs with Merge strategy on Merge images, each one is held for that duration in turn, so five files at 5 seconds gives you a 25-second clip.

Why is a five-second 1080p video only about 16 KB?

Because every frame is identical. The encoder writes one full frame and then a run of frames that say "nothing changed", which costs almost nothing, and the whole thing runs at one frame per second to begin with. Our 1920 × 1080 test card measured 16,732 bytes in H.264 and 14,476 in H.265, against 73,508 for MPEG-2 — the older codecs are less efficient at exactly this kind of static content, which is why the gap is so wide.

Which codec should I choose for a broadcast or signage ingest?

Ask the ingest, then pick from what works. H.264 is the page default and by far the most widely accepted in transport streams; H.265 is smaller but less universally decoded by older hardware; MPEG-2 is the traditional choice for legacy broadcast equipment and encodes fine here. Avoid MPEG-1, which cannot encode at this conversion's frame rate at all, and treat DivX, Xvid and MPEG-4 as a last resort — they are MPEG-4 Part 2 streams, which many transport-stream ingests will not touch.

Will the PSD's transparency survive into the video?

No, and it cannot. None of the codecs available for a transport stream carry an alpha channel, so every transparent pixel is composited onto the Background Color before encoding. That control defaults to White; we measured a fully transparent corner arriving as pure white in the encoded frame. If you need a keyable version of the graphic, export it from your NLE or motion tool with an alpha-capable codec instead.

Can I control the frame rate?

Not on this page. Image-to-video conversions encode at one frame per second, which is the correct choice for a static picture — a higher rate would multiply the number of identical frames without changing what you see — and no frame-rate control is rendered. This is also the direct reason MPEG-1 fails here, since that specification permits only a fixed set of much higher frame rates.

What is the difference between .ts and .m2ts output?

Packet framing. Our .ts output is plain MPEG transport stream: sync byte 0x47 at the very start of the file and 188-byte packets, which we confirmed by reading the bytes. A .m2ts gets BDAV framing instead — 192-byte packets with a four-byte arrival timestamp in front of each — which is what Blu-ray structures expect. Neither is a disc on its own, and an ingest built for one will usually refuse the other, so match what your destination asks for.

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

Your .psd is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, and both the upload and the resulting .ts are deleted automatically after a few hours. Files are never shared or made public, there is no watermark and no account is needed. If you only want the flattened picture rather than a video, PSD to PNG gives you that directly and keeps the transparency the video cannot.