Convert TS to CAVS — Free Online Tool
Convert MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS) files to CAVS format using H.264 video and AAC audio — entirely in your browser with no uploads required. Useful for adapting broadcast-captured TS content to the Chinese Audio Video Standard for compliant distribution or archival in Chinese media ecosystems.
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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
MPEG-2 Transport Stream files typically carry video encoded in H.264 (libx264), H.265, or MPEG-2 Video, alongside audio in AAC, AC-3, or MP3 — often with multiple audio tracks and subtitle streams from broadcast or DVR sources. Converting to CAVS requires re-encoding the video stream to H.264 using libx264 with a CRF-based quality setting, and re-encoding audio to a single AAC track. Because CAVS does not support multiple audio tracks, subtitles, or chapters, any secondary audio streams, embedded subtitle data, and chapter markers from the TS container will be dropped during conversion. The output is a lossy, single-track CAVS file suitable for broadcast-aligned playback in environments that recognize the Chinese national standard container.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the open-source multimedia processing engine that handles all demuxing, decoding, encoding, and muxing for this TS-to-CAVS conversion. |
-i input.ts
|
Specifies the input MPEG-2 Transport Stream file. FFmpeg will parse the TS container, identify all elementary streams (video, audio, subtitles), and make them available for processing. |
-c:v libx264
|
Re-encodes the video stream using the libx264 H.264 encoder, which is the standard video codec used in practical CAVS file production and is required here regardless of the source TS video codec. |
-c:a aac
|
Re-encodes the first audio stream to AAC using FFmpeg's native AAC encoder — the only audio codec supported in this CAVS output, replacing any AC-3, MP3, or multi-track audio present in the source TS. |
-crf 23
|
Sets the Constant Rate Factor for libx264 video quality at 23, the default balance between visual quality and file size. Lower values (e.g., 18) produce higher quality at larger file sizes; higher values (e.g., 28) compress more aggressively. |
-b:a 128k
|
Sets the AAC audio bitrate to 128 kilobits per second, a standard quality level for speech and music in broadcast-derived content. Increase to 192k or 256k for higher-fidelity audio in the CAVS output. |
output.cavs
|
Defines the output filename with the .cavs extension, which tells FFmpeg to mux the encoded H.264 video and AAC audio into the CAVS container format. |
Common Use Cases
- Preparing broadcast-recorded TS footage captured from Chinese digital television for submission to platforms or archives requiring CAVS-compliant files.
- Stripping unnecessary multi-track audio and subtitle data from a TS recording to produce a clean, single-stream CAVS file for simplified playback on Chinese set-top boxes.
- Converting HLS-segmented TS streams reassembled into a single file into CAVS format for offline distribution within Chinese media workflows.
- Adapting DVR-recorded transport stream content to CAVS for integration into Chinese broadcast post-production pipelines that mandate the national standard format.
- Creating a CAVS reference file from a TS master for quality-comparison testing between H.264-in-TS and H.264-in-CAVS container behavior.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, this conversion involves lossy re-encoding even if your source TS file already contains H.264 video. Because CAVS requires the video to be wrapped in its own container structure, the H.264 stream must be decoded and re-encoded rather than copied directly. The default CRF value of 23 produces visually good quality for most content, but each generation of re-encoding introduces some quality loss compared to the original.
CAVS does not support multiple audio tracks or subtitle streams, so only the first (default) audio track will be retained and re-encoded to AAC at 128k. All secondary audio tracks, embedded DVB subtitles, Teletext subtitles, and any other subtitle streams present in the TS file will be discarded during conversion. If preserving those tracks matters, you should extract them separately before converting.
CAVS (AVS1) has its own native codec specification, but practical FFmpeg-based workflows overwhelmingly use the libx264 H.264 encoder wrapped in a CAVS container for broad compatibility and encoding stability. A true AVS encoder (libxavs) exists but is rarely available in standard FFmpeg builds. The resulting file uses the .cavs extension and CAVS container structure while relying on H.264 as the video codec, which is the most common real-world approach.
Adjust the -crf value in the command: lower numbers mean higher quality and larger file sizes (CRF 18 is near-visually lossless for most content), while higher numbers reduce quality and file size (CRF 28 is noticeably compressed). For the CAVS output format, supported CRF values are 0, 10, 18, 23, 28, 35, and 51. Run the modified command locally on your desktop for files over 1GB where the browser tool's limit applies.
Yes. On Linux or macOS you can loop over files with a shell one-liner: for f in *.ts; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -crf 23 -b:a 128k "${f%.ts}.cavs"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.ts) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -crf 23 -b:a 128k "%~nf.cavs". The browser-based tool processes one file at a time.
CAVS support is limited outside of Chinese broadcast and consumer electronics ecosystems. VLC can play CAVS files on most platforms, but many common Western media players and editing tools do not recognize the format natively. If your target audience or workflow is not specifically tied to Chinese broadcast standards, you would likely be better served converting your TS file to MP4 or MKV instead.
Technical Notes
CAVS (Chinese Audio Video Standard, also known as AVS) was developed as a royalty-efficient alternative to H.264 for Chinese national broadcast use, and the container format reflects that narrow scope — it is lossy-only, carries a single video and single audio stream, and has no provisions for subtitles, chapters, or alternate tracks. When converting from TS, this means the rich multiplexing capabilities of the Transport Stream container — designed for broadcast environments with multiple programs, conditional access, PCR timing, and multiple elementary streams — are reduced to a simple single-program file. The re-encoding from whatever codec was in the source TS (MPEG-2 Video, H.264, or H.265) to libx264 is unavoidable; there is no remux path. AAC audio at 128k is the default and is the only audio codec supported in this CAVS implementation. Metadata such as broadcast timestamps, program information, and stream identifiers present in the TS container will not carry over to CAVS. File sizes will vary significantly depending on the source codec: converting MPEG-2 Video TS to CAVS/H.264 will typically reduce file size substantially, while converting H.264 TS to CAVS/H.264 may produce a similar or slightly larger file due to the re-encoding overhead at equivalent CRF settings.