The software must explicitly list SDV as a supported input format. If it only handles MP4 and MOV, it will likely fail when reading the proprietary headers of an SDV file. Ideally, the converter should also output to a wide range of formats, including MP4, MKV, MOV, and AVI.

Since SDV files are already low-resolution (typically 320x240 or 640x480), you cannot afford generational loss. Look for converters offering "lossless remuxing" (re-wrapping without re-encoding) or high-bitrate encoding.