Convert MPEG to CAVS — Free Online Tool
Convert MPEG files (MPEG-1/MPEG-2 video with MP2 audio) to CAVS format using H.264 video and AAC audio encoding. This tool re-encodes legacy broadcast-era MPEG streams into a modern container compatible with Chinese broadcast and distribution standards, entirely in your browser with no file uploads.
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FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
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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
This conversion is a full transcode — both the video and audio streams must be re-encoded because MPEG and CAVS use fundamentally incompatible codecs. The MPEG-2 video stream (or MPEG-1 if present) is decoded and re-encoded using libx264, FFmpeg's H.264 encoder, at a default CRF of 23, which balances file size and visual quality well for most content. The original MP2 audio (the standard audio codec in MPEG files) is transcoded to AAC at 128k bitrate, since CAVS requires AAC and cannot carry MP2. Because MPEG files do not support chapters, multiple audio tracks, or embedded subtitles, none of those features need special handling during conversion. The result is a .cavs file containing an H.264 video stream and AAC audio, conforming to the Chinese Audio Video Standard container structure.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the open-source multimedia processing engine that powers this conversion. In the browser tool, this runs as FFmpeg.wasm compiled to WebAssembly, so no installation is needed. |
-i input.mpeg
|
Specifies the input file, which is an MPEG container holding MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video and typically MP2 audio. FFmpeg auto-detects the specific codec variant (MPEG-1 vs MPEG-2) from the file. |
-c:v libx264
|
Re-encodes the MPEG-2 (or MPEG-1) video stream using the H.264 encoder. This is necessary because the CAVS container cannot carry MPEG-2 video, and H.264 offers significantly better compression than the legacy MPEG codecs. |
-c:a aac
|
Transcodes the MP2 audio from the MPEG source into AAC, which is the required audio codec for CAVS output. AAC provides better audio quality than MP2 at the same or lower bitrates. |
-crf 23
|
Sets the Constant Rate Factor for the H.264 encoder to 23, the standard default. This controls the trade-off between visual quality and file size — lower values produce higher quality; use -crf 18 for near-lossless or -crf 28 for a smaller, more compressed CAVS output. |
-b:a 128k
|
Sets the AAC audio bitrate to 128 kilobits per second. This is appropriate for most MPEG source material; if your MPEG file contains high-quality MP2 audio at 224k or 256k, consider increasing this to -b:a 192k to better preserve audio fidelity. |
output.cavs
|
Defines the output filename with the .cavs extension, telling FFmpeg to write the result as a CAVS container. The .cavs extension signals the Chinese Audio Video Standard format to compatible players and broadcast systems. |
Common Use Cases
- Preparing legacy MPEG broadcast recordings for distribution on Chinese media platforms that require CAVS-compliant files
- Modernizing MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video archives from DVD or VCD sources into a more efficient H.264-based format while targeting Chinese broadcast compatibility
- Reducing file size of MPEG recordings for storage — H.264 typically achieves significantly smaller files than MPEG-2 at comparable visual quality
- Converting MPEG footage captured from older broadcast systems or VHS digitization hardware into a format accepted by Chinese digital broadcasting workflows
- Testing CAVS format output from MPEG source material for developers building or validating Chinese media standard pipelines
- Re-encoding MPEG content with outdated MP2 audio into AAC, which offers better quality at lower bitrates and is required for CAVS playback
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, some quality loss is inevitable because this is a full transcode from one lossy format to another — the MPEG-2 video is decoded and re-encoded with H.264, and the MP2 audio is re-encoded as AAC. However, H.264 at CRF 23 is generally very efficient and the output often looks visually similar to the MPEG source, especially for standard-definition content. The MP2-to-AAC audio transcode at 128k is typically transparent for speech and most music content. If you want to minimize quality loss, you can lower the CRF value (e.g., -crf 18) in the FFmpeg command to increase video quality at the cost of a larger file.
The CAVS format technically refers to the Chinese national standard (GB/T 20090), but in practice the .cavs container is most commonly used with H.264 video and AAC audio in FFmpeg workflows, as native CAVS codec (AVS1) encoding support is limited in open-source tools. This tool uses libx264 (H.264) as the video codec, which produces a broadly compatible and efficient output. If you specifically need AVS1/AVS2 codec encoding, you would need a specialized Chinese broadcast encoding tool or a build of FFmpeg with those libraries.
DVD MPEG-2 video is typically interlaced (480i or 576i), and this FFmpeg command does not automatically deinterlace the content. If your source is interlaced, you may see combing artifacts in the CAVS output on progressive displays. To fix this, you can add a deinterlace filter to the command, for example: ffmpeg -i input.mpeg -vf yadif -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -crf 23 -b:a 128k output.cavs. The yadif filter is FFmpeg's standard deinterlacing filter and works well with MPEG-2 source material.
To adjust video quality, change the -crf value: lower numbers mean higher quality and larger files (e.g., -crf 18 for near-lossless, -crf 28 for smaller files with more compression). The range is 0–51, with 23 as the default. To adjust audio quality, change the -b:a value to a higher bitrate such as -b:a 192k or -b:a 256k — this is especially useful if your MPEG source has high-quality MP2 audio at 256k or above and you want to preserve that fidelity in the AAC output.
Yes, on the command line you can use a shell loop to batch process files. On Linux or macOS: for f in *.mpeg; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -crf 23 -b:a 128k "${f%.mpeg}.cavs"; done. On Windows PowerShell: Get-ChildItem *.mpeg | ForEach-Object { ffmpeg -i $_.Name -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -crf 23 -b:a 128k ($_.BaseName + '.cavs') }. The browser-based tool processes one file at a time, so the FFmpeg command is the recommended approach for large batches.
MPEG files carry very limited metadata compared to modern containers — typically just basic stream information with no chapter markers, embedded subtitles, or multiple audio tracks. FFmpeg will attempt to copy any available metadata tags to the output, but because MPEG's metadata capabilities are minimal, there is usually little to preserve. The CAVS format similarly does not support chapters or multiple audio tracks, so there are no metadata features lost in this specific conversion that were present in the source.
Technical Notes
MPEG files use either MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video compression alongside MP2 audio, both of which are legacy codecs dating to the 1990s and widely used in broadcast, DVD, and VCD applications. Because neither MPEG-2 video nor MP2 audio is compatible with the CAVS container, this conversion requires a complete decode-and-reencode of both streams — there is no stream-copy shortcut available as there would be in, say, an MKV-to-MP4 remux. The libx264 encoder used here is mature and well-optimized; it will handle MPEG-2 source resolutions (typically 480i, 576i, 720p, or 1080i) without issue, though interlaced sources may need the yadif deinterlace filter added manually. H.264 at CRF 23 typically produces files 30–60% smaller than the equivalent MPEG-2 at comparable visual quality, making this conversion worthwhile for archival or storage purposes. The AAC audio output at 128k is a reasonable default for MPEG sources that commonly carry MP2 at 192k or 224k — if audio fidelity is critical, increase -b:a to 192k or 256k. CAVS files do not support transparency, subtitles, or chapter markers, and neither does MPEG, so there are no feature regressions in this conversion.