Formats & playback 6 min read
TS Recording Files to MP4: Set-top Boxes, Surveillance and Stream Captures
TS is the broadcast delivery format: no header, designed for lossy-signal resilience, streamable mid-file. Players tolerate it; editors and phones do not. MP4 is almost always the destination.
What makes TS files awkward
- No global header — players must scan the stream to know what is inside; some tools refuse or misreport duration.
- Variable/odd frame rates from broadcast (29.97 with drops, or mixed rates) confuse editors expecting CFR.
- Multiple programs/tracks can hide inside one capture.
Conversion paths
H.264 inside → remux to MP4, instant and lossless. If the capture has timing oddities (duration wrong, seeking broken), a re-encode with normalized timestamps fixes the index at the cost of one generation. Surveillance formats that are actually proprietary containers masquerading as TS need their vendor export first.