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Convert a CSQ file to MP4

A .csq recording only opens in FLIR's own software, which makes it awkward to put in a report or send to someone. Rendering it to MP4 gives you a video that plays anywhere — and you can do it here, in the browser, for free.

How to do it

Open the viewer and drop your .csq file onto the upload area.
Pick a thermal palette. This is the one choice that changes how the video looks, and it is baked in once the file is encoded, so it is worth trying a couple first.
Choose how the temperature range is scaled. Global holds one range across the whole recording, so a warming object visibly warms; per-frame restretches every frame, which brings out detail but makes frames incomparable.
Press Download MP4. Every frame is rendered and encoded on the server, with a progress bar while it runs — a few seconds for a short capture, longer for a big one.

An MP4 is not a measurement. Encoding flattens each frame to eight-bit colour, so the temperature behind every pixel is gone. Keep the original .csq if you may need to measure again later, and export PNG frames or a JSON temperature array when you need the numbers rather than a picture of them.

Picking a palette

The palette is not decoration — it decides what a viewer of the video can see. A few that earn their keep:

Inferno and Iron read as heat to almost everybody, which makes them the safe choice for a report someone else will read.
Grayscale keeps the eye on shape and edges rather than on colour, which suits building envelopes and electrical work.
Rainbow spreads a narrow temperature band across many hues, so small differences become obvious — at the cost of implying steps in the data that are not there.

The palette the camera itself had selected is available too, if the point is to reproduce what the operator saw on the screen at capture time.

The alternatives

FLIR's Thermal Studio Pro and Research Studio both export SEQ and CSQ to MP4 or WebM, and they are the right answer if you already have a licence and work on Windows. On the command line, exiftool can pull the raw frames out and ffmpeg can encode them, which is scriptable but takes some setting up and gives you no preview while you choose a palette.

This site is the option that needs neither a licence nor an install: it runs in the browser, and your file is deleted from the server once it has gone a day without being opened.

Frequently asked

How do I convert a CSQ file to MP4?

Upload the .csq recording to CSQ Viewer, choose a thermal palette and a temperature scale, then use Download as MP4. The server renders every frame in the palette you chose and encodes the result, which you download when it finishes.

Does converting a CSQ to MP4 keep the temperature data?

No, and no video format does. An MP4 stores eight-bit colour, so the raw sensor reading behind each pixel is gone once it is encoded. Keep the original .csq if you still need to measure; export temperatures as JSON, or frames as PNG, when you need the numbers alongside the video.

Is there a free way to convert CSQ to MP4?

Yes. CSQ Viewer does it in the browser at no cost. FLIR’s own Thermal Studio Pro and Research Studio can also export SEQ and CSQ to MP4 or WebM, but they are paid desktop products.

Convert a CSQ file now

Guides

If you need help working with .CSQ files or thermal images and videos in general, feel free to contact me.