TS to PPM Converter

How to Convert TS to PPM Online

1. Upload Your TS File: Drag and drop a .ts transport stream, or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Batch is supported, so multiple TS recordings can be queued in one job.
2. Pick Frame Selection: Choose Specific Frame and enter a timestamp (e.g. 2.100 for 2 seconds 100 ms) to grab one still, or Multiple Screenshots to export a sequence — the dropdown lets you pull one frame per second, per 2 seconds, and so on across the clip.
3. Set Resolution and Bit Depth (Optional): Keep the source resolution, scale by percentage, pick a preset (768p, 1080p, 2160p), or enter exact Width / Height. Set Bit Depth to 8-bit (recommended, standard 24-bit RGB), 16-bit (high precision, doubles file size), or 1-bit (black and white). Pick a background color under Image Transparency if needed.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files process on our servers and the PPM stills (or a ZIP of stills, for Multiple Screenshots) drop to your browser — no watermark, no sign-up.

Why Convert TS to PPM?

A .ts file is an MPEG transport stream — the container used by ATSC, DVB, IPTV, and most TV-recording PVRs. It wraps either MPEG-2 video (H.262) or H.264/AVC video plus audio and PSIP signalling so the stream survives broadcast packet loss. PPM (Portable Pixmap) is the opposite end of the spectrum: a plain, uncompressed Netpbm raster spec from the late 1980s where every pixel is a literal 8-bit-per-channel RGB triplet. There is no codec, no metadata, no color profile — just a tiny ASCII header (P6 width height 255) followed by raw pixel bytes. That makes it the standard input format for image-processing pipelines that don't want to depend on libjpeg, libpng, or libtiff.

• Computer-vision and ML pipelines — OpenCV, scikit-image, ImageMagick, and most academic CV tools read PPM natively. Pulling labeled frames out of broadcast captures for object detection or OCR training is the canonical TS-to-PPM use case.
• Astrophotography and lucky-imaging stacks — capture software like SharpCap and FireCapture writes TS recordings of planetary video, then stacking tools (AutoStakkert!, RegiStax, PIPP) consume PPM frames for alignment and stacking.
• Forensic and archival frame grabs — when an investigator or archivist needs a bit-exact still from a broadcast recording without re-encoding through JPEG, PPM preserves every R/G/B value from the decoded frame.
• Color-science work — PPM stores linear-friendly 24-bit RGB with optional 16-bit per channel, which suits gamut, ICC-profile, and printer-test scripts that would otherwise be limited by JPEG's 8-bit lossy output.
• Tutorials and teaching — undergraduate graphics and image-processing courses use PPM because the format fits in a one-page spec and can be written by a 20-line C program.
• Vintage and embedded tooling — older Unix/X11 utilities and many embedded vision SDKs still read PPM as a first-class input long after PNG, JPEG, and TIFF were added.

TS vs PPM — Format Comparison

Frame Selection Quick Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Why use PPM instead of PNG or JPEG when grabbing frames?

PPM is uncompressed and dependency-free, so the bytes that come out match the decoded video frame exactly — no JPEG quantization noise, no PNG zlib step, no library version mismatch. That matters when you're feeding the frame into OpenCV, an astrophotography stacker, or a color-science script that wants to read raw 24-bit RGB and start working. For sharing or web display, convert later to PNG or JPG — PPM is meant to be the intermediate, not the final.

Will I lose quality going from H.264 inside TS to PPM?

PPM itself is lossless, but the source video was already compressed when it was broadcast or recorded — typically 8-bit 4:2:0 YUV in H.264 or MPEG-2. The decode-and-write step doesn't introduce additional loss beyond the YUV-to-RGB color conversion. If your TS source is 10-bit HEVC, pick 16-bit bit depth to preserve more of the dynamic range; otherwise the default 8-bit P6 captures everything the video frame contains.

My TS file has MPEG-2 video — does that still work?

Yes. TS is a container governed by ISO/IEC 13818-1; the video payload inside can be MPEG-2 (H.262), H.264/AVC, or H.265/HEVC. The converter decodes whichever codec your stream carries, then writes the selected frame(s) as PPM. ATSC broadcasts in North America are still mostly H.262 in TS, and European DVB tends to be H.264 — both convert the same way.

How big will a single PPM frame be?

Raw 24-bit RGB has no compression, so the math is direct: width × height × 3 bytes plus a ~20-byte header. A 1920×1080 frame is about 6.2 MB; a 3840×2160 (4K) frame is about 24.9 MB. A 16-bit PPM doubles those numbers (6 bytes per pixel). If file size matters, drop the resolution preset to 720p or 480p before converting, or use TS to JPG instead.

Can I extract every frame of the video?

Use Multiple Screenshots and pick the highest sampling rate in the dropdown. For a true frame-perfect dump (every frame, no skips), you'll get better control from FFmpeg locally (ffmpeg -i input.ts frame_%05d.ppm) — the browser-based converter is tuned for sampled stills (one per second, per 2 seconds, etc.) rather than a 60 fps full decode that would produce thousands of multi-megabyte PPM files per minute of video.

What if I just want a video file, not stills?

You're on the wrong page. To remux or re-encode the broadcast stream as a standard MP4, use TS to MP4 — it keeps the H.264 or transcodes MPEG-2 to AVC and rewraps in an MP4 container that plays in every browser and on every mobile device.

What programs open a .ppm file?

GIMP, IrfanView, XnView, ImageMagick (display, convert), Photoshop (with the free Netpbm plugin), Preview on macOS, and the standard image viewers on most Linux desktops. Web browsers don't render PPM, so if you need to embed the still on a page, run it through PPM to PNG or PPM to JPG first.

Should I pick 8-bit or 16-bit Bit Depth?

8-bit is the right answer for 99% of broadcast TS sources — they're encoded 8-bit YUV at the camera, and going to 16-bit PPM just doubles file size with no real precision gain. Pick 16-bit only if your TS file is 10-bit HEVC (HDR / Rec. 2020 broadcast, some 4K UHD captures) and you plan to do tone-mapping or grading on the still afterward. Pick 1-bit only when you want a black-and-white mask, not a photo.

Is there a file size or count limit?

Free conversions process on our servers with generous per-file caps; for very large batches or full-frame dumps from long recordings, a free account raises the ceiling. Anonymous sessions get the same per-file processing — no watermark, no sign-up wall before the download.