Convert M2TS to MPG — Free Online Tool
Convert M2TS Blu-ray and AVCHD footage to MPG format by transcoding H.264/H.265 video to MPEG-2 and Dolby/AAC audio to MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2). This is ideal for achieving broad DVD-player and broadcast-hardware compatibility from high-definition source material.
to
FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
Drop your M2TS file here
or click to browse
Free — no uploads, no signups. Your files never leave your browser.
Settings
Note: Browser-based encoding uses approximate quality targets. For precise CRF compression, copy the FFmpeg command above and run it on your desktop.
Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
M2TS files typically contain H.264 or H.265 video alongside multi-channel Dolby TrueHD, DTS, or AAC audio inside an MPEG-2 Transport Stream wrapper. Because MPG is built on the MPEG-1/MPEG-2 standard and supports only mpeg1video or mpeg2video for video and MP2 or MP3 for audio, neither the video nor the audio stream can be copied directly — both must be fully re-encoded. The video is decoded from its source codec and re-encoded as MPEG-2 video using a constant quantizer scale (-q:v 2, the highest quality setting). The audio — regardless of whether it was originally AAC, Dolby Digital, or DTS — is decoded and re-encoded as MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) audio at 192 kbps. The result is a self-contained MPG file with no transparency, subtitle tracks, or multiple audio streams, since the MPG format does not support those features.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary. This is the open-source multimedia framework doing all the decoding, re-encoding, and muxing work for the M2TS to MPG conversion in this command. |
-i input.m2ts
|
Specifies the input file — an M2TS (BDAV MPEG-2 Transport Stream) file, typically containing H.264 or H.265 video alongside multi-channel audio such as Dolby TrueHD, DTS, or AAC. |
-c:v mpeg2video
|
Sets the video encoder to MPEG-2, the standard required by the MPG container. This triggers a full video re-encode since the source M2TS video (typically H.264 or H.265) is not compatible with MPG's codec requirements. |
-c:a mp2
|
Sets the audio encoder to MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2), the standard audio codec for MPG files. The source audio — whether Dolby, DTS, or AAC — will be fully decoded and re-encoded as stereo MP2, discarding any surround channels. |
-q:v 2
|
Sets the MPEG-2 video quality using a fixed quantizer scale, where 1 is the highest quality and 31 is the lowest. A value of 2 produces near-maximum quality MPEG-2 output, which is recommended when downconverting from high-quality Blu-ray or AVCHD source material. |
-b:a 192k
|
Sets the MP2 audio bitrate to 192 kilobits per second, which is the standard bitrate for DVD-quality stereo MP2 audio and balances file size with audio fidelity well for typical speech and music content from Blu-ray sources. |
output.mpg
|
Specifies the output filename with the .mpg extension, which tells FFmpeg to write an MPEG-2 Program Stream container — the standard format for DVD, VCD, and broadcast-compatible MPEG-2 video files. |
Common Use Cases
- Loading Blu-ray or AVCHD camcorder footage into legacy non-linear editing software (such as older Avid or Premiere versions) that only accepts MPEG-2 Program Stream files rather than Transport Streams
- Preparing high-definition M2TS content for DVD authoring workflows where the authoring tool requires a standard MPEG-2 MPG input before multiplexing into a VIDEO_TS structure
- Archiving AVCHD camcorder clips to a format playable on standalone DVD players or older media servers that support MPEG-2 video but not H.264 Transport Streams
- Converting Blu-ray rips to MPG for use with broadcast playout systems or cable-head-end encoders that expect MPEG-2 Program Stream ingest
- Stripping complex multi-track audio and subtitle data from an M2TS file down to a single stereo MP2 audio track for simple playback in environments with limited codec support
- Generating MPG proxies from high-definition M2TS originals for use as offline edit references on machines too slow to decode H.265 in real time
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, there is a generational quality loss because the video must be fully re-encoded from a modern, efficient codec (H.264 or H.265) into the older MPEG-2 standard. MPEG-2 is less compression-efficient, so the MPG file will often be noticeably larger than the source M2TS at the same visual quality, or noticeably lower quality at the same file size. Using -q:v 2 (the default here) gives you the highest quality MPEG-2 output, but MPEG-2 still cannot match H.264 at equivalent bitrates. For critical work, keep the original M2TS as your master.
All audio tracks — regardless of whether they are Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, Dolby Digital (AC3), or AAC — will be decoded and mixed down, then re-encoded as a single stereo MP2 audio stream at 192 kbps. MPG does not support multiple audio tracks or lossless audio formats, so surround sound information will be lost or downmixed. If preserving multi-channel audio is important, consider an output format like MKV or MP4 instead.
No. MPG does not support subtitle tracks of any kind — neither the PGS (Presentation Graphics) subtitles common on Blu-ray M2TS files nor SRT-style text subtitles can be carried in the output container. Any subtitle streams present in the source M2TS will be silently dropped during conversion. If you need subtitles, you would need to burn them into the video stream before or during conversion using FFmpeg's subtitle filter, or choose a different output format.
This is expected when the source M2TS uses H.264 or H.265. Both of those codecs are far more compression-efficient than MPEG-2, meaning MPEG-2 requires significantly more data to represent the same image quality. At -q:v 2 (maximum quality), the MPEG-2 encoder will use as many bits as it needs to achieve high fidelity, which can result in a file several times the size of an H.264 source of equivalent resolution. You can increase the -q:v value (up to 31) to reduce file size at the cost of visible quality degradation.
To adjust video quality, change the -q:v value: lower numbers (minimum 1) mean higher quality and larger files, while higher numbers (up to 31) reduce quality and file size. The default of 2 is the recommended starting point for maximum quality. To change audio bitrate, replace 192k in -b:a 192k with 128k, 256k, or 320k. For example, a command targeting slightly smaller files might use '-q:v 5 -b:a 128k', while '-q:v 1 -b:a 320k' targets the absolute best MPEG-2 quality the format can produce.
Yes. On Linux or macOS, you can use a shell loop: 'for f in *.m2ts; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v mpeg2video -c:a mp2 -q:v 2 -b:a 192k "${f%.m2ts}.mpg"; done'. On Windows Command Prompt, use 'for %f in (*.m2ts) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:v mpeg2video -c:a mp2 -q:v 2 -b:a 192k "%~nf.mpg"'. This will process each M2TS file in sequence and produce a corresponding MPG file with the same base name. The browser-based tool handles one file at a time, so the FFmpeg command is especially useful for large batch jobs.
Technical Notes
M2TS uses an MPEG-2 Transport Stream (.ts) container, which is optimized for streaming and error recovery and can carry multiple video, audio, and subtitle programs simultaneously. MPG — specifically MPEG-2 Program Stream — is a simpler, single-program container designed for disc and broadcast use, with no error-recovery packetization overhead. During this conversion, all modern codec streams are transcoded: video from H.264/H.265 to MPEG-2 (ISO/IEC 13818-2), and audio to MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2, ISO/IEC 11172-3). The -q:v parameter for MPEG-2 uses a fixed quantizer scale where 1 is best and 31 is worst, making it behave differently from the -crf scale used by x264/x265. Chapter markers and multiple audio track metadata present in the M2TS source are lost entirely, as MPG supports neither. Blu-ray PGS subtitle streams cannot be carried or burned automatically without an additional -vf subtitles filter step. The resulting MPG is compatible with DVD-Video MPEG-2 constraints in terms of codec, but may exceed DVD bitrate limits (typically 9.8 Mbps combined) if encoding from a high-bitrate 1080p source — DVD authoring tools may reject it without a bitrate cap applied via -maxrate and -bufsize flags.