.m2ts is a filename extension used for the Blu-ray disc Audio-Video (BDAV) MPEG-2 Transport Stream (M2TS) container file format.
[6] The BDAV container format is a modification of the MPEG-2 transport stream (ITU-T H.222.0 | ISO/IEC 13818-1) specification for random-access media, such as Blu-ray discs, DVDs, hard drives or solid-state memory cards.
To be able to reconstruct a T-STD compliant constant rate Transport Stream for playback, the arrival timestamp of each packet needs to be recorded.
[9][10][11] Blu-ray disc titles authored with menu support are in the BDMV (Blu-ray disc Movie) format and contain audio, video, and other streams in a BDAV container (.m2ts), which is based on the MPEG transport stream format.
Panasonic, Canon and other brands of AVCHD camcorders also store recorded video in the BDAV container format.
[13][18][19] The M2TS files on a Blu-ray disc are placed in the subdirectory "STREAM" of the "BDMV" (or "BDAV") directory, which is at the root level.
M2TS files can also be played on Sony PlayStation 3s, Sony Bravia TVs, Western Digital WDTVs, Xtreamer media player, Amkette FlashTV HD Media Player and Panasonic Viera TVs supporting playback of AVCHD.
Apple's Final Cut Pro can read .MTS files (as stored in Sony HDR camcorders) by using the AVCHD plugin in the Log and Transfer window.