X3F to MPG Converter

How to Convert X3F to MPG Online

1. Upload Your X3F Files: Drag and drop or click "Add Files" to select Sigma Foveon RAW photos from SD9, SD10, SD14, SD15, SD1 / SD1 Merrill, DP1/DP2/DP3 Merrill, or DP0/DP1/DP2/DP3 Quattro bodies. Batch is supported — drop a full studio session, location set, or bracket sequence at once.
2. Pick Merge Strategy and Image Duration: Set Merge Strategy to "Merge images" for one slideshow MPG that plays the whole sequence end-to-end, or "Video per image" to render each X3F as its own short clip. Pick Image Duration — anywhere from 1/60 second per frame (60 fps timelapse pacing) up to 10 seconds per image (long-dwell kiosk slideshow). Default is 5 seconds per frame.
3. Set Quality, Resolution, and Background Color (Optional): Under File Compression keep Quality Preset on "Very High (Recommended)" for DVD-grade output, or switch to Constant Quality / Constraint Quality (qscale 1–31 for MPEG-2) for finer control. Under Video Resolution pick Keep Original, a Preset (2160p, 1440p, 1080p, 720p, 576p, 480p, 360p, 240p, 144p), a Fixed Resolution (1920×1080, 720×480 NTSC DVD, 720×576 PAL DVD, etc.), or enter custom Width × Height. Pick a Background Color (black default, white, or 20+ swatches) to fill the bars when source aspect ratio differs from output.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. 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.

Why Convert X3F to MPG?

X3F is Sigma's proprietary RAW container for cameras using the Foveon X3 sensor — a stacked three-layer photodiode that captures full red, green, and blue at every pixel location rather than interpolating from a Bayer mosaic. Files begin with the ASCII signature "FOVb" and store sensor data plus a JPEG preview, with the raw payload partially obfuscated (per the libopenraw notes, the raw image data within X3F is encrypted, which is why support outside Sigma Photo Pro lagged for years). MPG is the MPEG program stream container — typically wrapping MPEG-1 (ISO/IEC 11172, 1993) or MPEG-2 video (ISO/IEC 13818, 1995) — and remains the format the DVD-Video, Video CD, and Super Video CD specs mandate. Rendering a stack of X3F frames straight to MPG yields a video slideshow that plays on hardware that won't touch MP4, WebM, or HEVC.

• DVD-Video authoring from a Sigma portfolio — DVD-Video carries MPEG-2 inside a VOB at up to 9.8 Mbit/s and a resolution of 720×480 at 29.97 fps (NTSC) or 720×576 at 25 fps (PAL). A studio shoot from an SD1 Merrill (15.36 MP, 4800×3200) or DP3 Quattro (5424×3616) rendered straight to a DVD-spec MPG masters cleanly through DVDStyler, ImgBurn, or Roxio with no second transcode.
• Legacy gallery and kiosk display — older Panasonic, Sony, and LG TVs from the early 2010s play MPG off USB but choke on H.265 or AV1. Signage players like the BrightSign HD220 and NEC MultiSync legacy units still favor MPEG-2 program streams for multi-year duty cycles; an X3F slideshow exported once outlives several firmware generations.
• Time-lapse from Sigma's Merrill and Quattro bodies — none of the DP Merrill or SD Quattro cameras shipped with in-camera video, so the only path from a multi-hour interval shoot to a moving sequence is to render the X3Fs into a video. Set Image Duration to 1/24s or 1/30s to drop a 720-frame golden-hour sequence into a 30-second cinematic clip.
• Photographer portfolio reels for ATV/STB clients — broadcast playout servers (Grass Valley K2, Harmonic Spectrum) and traditional cable ingest pipelines accept MPG natively. A 30-image Sigma Foveon portfolio rendered at 5 seconds per frame becomes a 2:30 reel that drops straight into a station's MXF-wrapped show without a follow-up transcode.
• Archive exchange format — MPEG-2 is an open ISO/IEC 13818 standard with mature, royalty-free decoders in FFmpeg and VLC. Sigma discontinued the DP0/DP1/DP2/DP3 Quattro line in 2022, and X3F support across third-party RAW developers remains uneven; pairing the X3F originals with a rendered MPG slideshow makes the work playable on any machine for the next two decades, even if Sigma Photo Pro stops being maintained.
• Slideshow for older smart TVs and Blu-ray players — most Blu-ray players accept DVD-spec MPGs from a USB stick when newer codecs fail. Rendering a Foveon portrait set to 720×480 MPEG-2 turns a non-playable RAW folder into something a parent's living-room TV can read.

X3F vs MPG — Format Comparison

Sigma Foveon Cameras That Produce X3F

Image Duration and Resolution Quick Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the converter going through X3F directly rather than asking me to develop to JPEG first?

The tool decodes the X3F's embedded preview pipeline so you can render straight to MPG in one step. That trades the deep editing latitude of Sigma Photo Pro (where you'd normally tune exposure, color, and the trademark Foveon micro-contrast per shot) for speed. For a quick slideshow, kiosk export, or family DVD it's a one-pass workflow. For graded portfolio work, develop the X3Fs in Sigma Photo Pro or the Sigma X3F Photoshop plug-in first, export to TIFF or JPEG, then run JPG to MPG or PNG to MPG on the developed sequence.

Why is MPG the right choice over MP4 for these Sigma photos?

If the playback target is a DVD player, a Video CD / Super Video CD, a broadcast ingest server, or an older USB-input TV from before 2014, MPG with MPEG-2 video is what the device's hardware decoder expects. If you're delivering to YouTube, Instagram, a modern phone, or a website embed, MP4 with H.264 is more efficient and ubiquitous — use X3F to MP4 for those. The shortcut: MPG for legacy hardware decoders, MP4 for screens and the web.

What resolution should I use for an NTSC vs PAL DVD slideshow?

NTSC (North America, Japan, the Philippines, parts of South America): 720×480 at 29.97 fps. PAL (Europe, most of Asia and Africa, Australia): 720×576 at 25 fps. Pick the matching Preset Resolution; the converter letterboxes the Foveon 3:2 frames to the DVD's 4:3 or 16:9 display aspect, filling the bars with the Background Color you choose. Both targets stay under the DVD-Video 9.8 Mbit/s ceiling at the Very High preset.

Does the converter preserve the Foveon X3 color advantage?

Partially. The Foveon sensor captures full RGB at every pixel by stacking three photodiodes, which gives X3F files notably crisper per-pixel color detail and rich tonality straight out of camera. MPG is an 8-bit YCbCr 4:2:0 video format — the chroma subsampling alone drops some of that color resolution, and MPEG-2 quantization adds more. The output is sharper than a Bayer-source MPG of the same scene, but if pixel-level color fidelity matters more than playback compatibility, render to a higher-bit-depth still target like X3F to TIFF instead and review on a color-managed display.

How long will the output MPG be?

Length equals number of X3F frames × Image Duration. 25 frames at 4 seconds = 1 minute 40 seconds. 720 frames at 1/30s = 24 seconds. If Merge Strategy is "Video per image", each output MPG runs for exactly one Duration interval and you get one file per upload.

My X3F files are from a Quattro body — will they convert the same as Merrill files?

Yes. The Quattro variant of the Foveon sensor uses a different layer distribution (19.6 MP top layer plus 4.9 MP × 2 underlying layers, versus three equal 15.36 MP layers on Merrill) and Sigma changed the X3F internal layout to match, but both variants decode through the same pipeline. Effective output resolution is reported as 5424×3616 for Quattro DP-series bodies and 4800×3200 for SD1 / DP Merrill — both downscale cleanly to any DVD or HD preset.

Can I add background music to the slideshow?

The tool emits a silent MPG with a placeholder MP2 audio track so the file stays DVD-spec compliant. To add music, drop the rendered MPG into DVDStyler (free, Windows/Mac/Linux) or Shotcut and attach an audio track at authoring time. Alternatively, render the MPG, then run it through a downstream editor that accepts MPEG-2 program streams directly — DaVinci Resolve and Premiere both ingest.mpg without a transcode.

Why is the MPG output much larger than the source X3F files?

An X3F holds one still frame; an MPG holds many encoded frames per second. A 5-second 720×480 NTSC clip at the Very High preset runs roughly 5–6 MB even from a single X3F because MPEG-2 inserts a full I-frame at the start of every GOP. To shrink an existing MPG, run it through Compress MPG. For a much smaller modern-codec equivalent of the same slideshow, X3F to MP4 with H.264 is typically 3–5× smaller at comparable perceived quality.

Will the X3F files leave my computer?

Conversion runs on our servers — X3F files are processed on our servers and the originals do not upload to a remote server. Output downloads locally, and refreshing the page clears the queue. The same applies if you batch a full Quattro shoot of 200 frames; the processing runs on our servers.