RW2 to MTS Converter

Convert RW2 to MTS Online

.MTS is the filename camcorders give the stream files inside an AVCHD recording — an MPEG-2 Transport Stream carrying H.264 video, sitting in a BDMV/STREAM folder on the card. This tool develops a Panasonic LUMIX RW2 RAW photograph and writes it into an .mts transport stream as a still video clip, so a RAW frame can be fed to editing software or hardware that expects camcorder-style stream files. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours.

Be clear about what you get before you plan around it. This is a standalone transport stream, not an AVCHD disc structure, and because the source is a photograph the file has no audio track at all. Both points matter for camcorder-oriented tools, and both are covered below.

How to Convert RW2 to MTS

1. Upload Your RW2 Files: Drag and drop your .rw2 files or click "+ Add Files". A single photo becomes a freeze-frame stream; several become a sequence.
2. Set Merge strategy and Image Duration: Merge strategy is preselected to Merge images, joining the whole batch into one .mts; Video per image writes one stream per photo. Image Duration is preselected to 5 seconds per frame and runs from 1/60 s to 10 s.
3. Choose Video Codec, Background Color and Video resolution: Video Codec is preselected to H.264 and also lists H.265, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Xvid and DivX. Background Color is preselected to White and fills letterbox or pillarbox bars. Video resolution is preselected to Keep original — change this if you pick MPEG-2, for the reason explained below.
4. Set File Compression and Convert: File Compression opens on Quality Preset at Very High, with Constant Quality and Constraint Quality also available; bitrate and target-size modes are hidden for still sources. Click Convert and download. No sign-up, no watermark.

What the Default Settings Produce

Measured end to end on a 20-megapixel Panasonic DC-GH5 RW2 (24.2 MB source).

That packet detail is the difference between .mts and .m2ts. Our .mts output uses plain 188-byte MPEG-TS packets with the sync byte at the very start of the file. The .m2ts variant used on Blu-ray adds a 4-byte arrival-timestamp prefix to every packet (192-byte BDAV framing); if a device specifically wants that, use RW2 to M2TS instead of renaming this file.

How This Differs From Real AVCHD

The AVCHD specification, co-promoted by Sony and Panasonic, defines an MPEG-2 Transport Stream carrying MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video with audio in either Dolby Digital (AC-3) at 64–640 kbps or Linear PCM. Our output matches the container and the video codec but not the rest:

In practice: editors that simply import media (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Vegas, VLC) read this file fine. Tools that expect to ingest a camcorder card — anything that walks a BDMV tree, or a Blu-ray authoring app that validates AVCHD conformance — will not accept a loose stream with no audio. If you need a genuinely conformant AVCHD asset, author it in software built for that and use this file as the video source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my MTS have no audio track, and will that break my editor?

Because the source is a photograph. Image sources hide the Audio Codec menu entirely, so the transport stream is written with a single video elementary stream and no audio at all — not a silent audio track, but the absence of one. Most editors handle that without complaint and simply show no waveform. Camcorder-oriented and Blu-ray authoring tools may reject it, because AVCHD requires Dolby Digital (AC-3) or Linear PCM audio to be present. If yours does, add a silent audio track in your editor and re-export.

Why does MPEG-2 produce an empty file when I select it?

Two limits collide. The still is clamped to 4096 pixels on its long edge before encoding, and the MPEG-2 encoder refuses any frame whose width or height is an exact multiple of 4096 — it reports "Width or Height are not allowed to be multiples of 4096" and writes nothing at all. Since every RW2 wider than 4096 pixels lands on exactly 4096, the default combination of MPEG-2 plus Keep original fails. The fix is to set a size first: choose a Fixed Resolution such as 1920 x 1080, or type your own Width x Height. We confirmed MPEG-2 encodes normally at 1440 × 1080 from the same source. If you do not specifically need MPEG-2, leave the codec on H.264, which has no such restriction.

What is the difference between MTS, M2TS and TS files?

All three are MPEG-2 Transport Streams; the difference is packet framing and provenance. Plain .ts and .mts use 188-byte packets with the sync byte at the start of each one — we verified that on our own output, with 0x47 at offsets 0, 188, 376 and 564. .m2ts uses BDAV framing, where each packet is prefixed with a 4-byte arrival timestamp for a 192-byte total, which is what Blu-ray discs and their players expect. .MTS is conventionally what an AVCHD camcorder writes to its own card, while .M2TS is what appears after the footage is imported to a computer or authored to disc. Renaming does not convert between them — use RW2 to M2TS or RW2 to TS to get the framing you actually need.

Why is one RW2 a motionless clip?

An RW2 is one photograph. It has no timeline, no motion and no soundtrack, so the conversion develops the picture and holds it on screen for the Image Duration you set — five seconds by default, at 1 frame per second. To build something that changes over time, upload several RW2 files with Merge images selected; each photo then plays for its duration in sequence.

Why is the video only 4096 pixels wide when my LUMIX shoots more?

Every still is clamped to 4096 pixels on its long edge before it reaches the encoder, because the image demuxer is unreliable above that. Our GH5 file developed to 5208 × 3904 and reached the encoder at 4096 × 3070 — aspect ratio preserved, nothing cropped, about a 21% loss of linear resolution. Note that 4096 × 3070 is still well above 4K, so most editors will want it smaller anyway; a Fixed Resolution of 1920 x 1080 is the sensible setting for an HD timeline. If you wanted full sensor resolution, convert to RW2 to JPG rather than to video.

Which codecs are safe to choose on this page?

H.264 is the default and the right answer for almost everyone — it is what AVCHD itself uses, it has no frame-size restriction here, and the Quality Preset genuinely controls its output. H.265 works and compresses harder but is not AVCHD-legal, so camcorder-oriented tools may not read it. MPEG-2 needs an explicit resolution, as above. MPEG-4, Xvid and DivX are capped at 2048 pixels on the long edge — we measured the same source arriving at 2048 × 1532 with no warning — and are not transport-stream-friendly codecs for playback hardware, which generally only decodes H.264 or MPEG-2 in this container.

Does the Quality Preset do anything on the older codecs?

Not from a still image. The preset works by scaling the source's own video bitrate, and a photograph does not have one, so on MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Xvid and DivX it has nothing to scale and the encoder falls back to its own minimum. On H.264 and H.265 the preset selects a constant-quality target and works exactly as you would expect. If you are committed to one of the older codecs, use Constraint Quality and set a Max bitrate you are happy with instead of relying on the preset.

Will the colours match my camera's JPEG?

Close but slightly flatter. The RAW is developed with the white balance your camera actually recorded, not a generic daylight preset — we verified that on a file shot in Cloudy white balance, whose output matched a camera-white-balance render and clearly differed from a daylight one. What is not reproduced is Panasonic's Photo Style contrast and saturation curve, or the in-camera lens profile, so expect a marginally brighter, lower-contrast picture than the camera's own JPEG. There is no HDR tone-mapping in the pipeline either; the result is a plain sRGB conversion.

What happens to my RW2 file after conversion?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. Nothing is shared or made public, there is no sign-up, and the .mts carries no watermark. Keep the original RW2 — the transport stream bakes in white balance, exposure and tone, and none of the RAW latitude survives into a video frame.