AVCHD Footage to DVD

Wovian wrote on 12/9/2010, 9:54 AM

Hi All

Having purchased a new Sony HD camcorder to improve quality etc. from my DV tape machine, I'm a bit disapointed that VMS10 Platinum HD Studio does not allow me to burn AVCHD footage to DVD.

I am using the Make Movie (DVD) button to render my project but I believe that it's merely downgrading the quality to MPEG2 so I end up quality wise, with what I already had with the tapes.

How would I go about rendering the project to maintain the best possible quality DVD. (I'm also looking at purchasing a PC that can burn BD's but this is proving more difficult than I thought).

Thanks for any advice.

Comments

TOG62 wrote on 12/9/2010, 10:20 AM

I assume that you want to make DVD discs with AVCHD content that you can play on a Blu-ray player.

There are long discussions about this on theDVDA site but, in essence, you need to specify the output type as Blu-ray and the capacity as 4.7 or 8.5 GB. This type of disc (BD5 or BD9) will play on some players. There is a fairly complex process for converting this output to a more compatible format that most players can handle.

I have found that editing in VMS, outputting with Sony AVC CODEC and importing this file into multAVCHD (free) allows compatible discs to be created.

Wovian wrote on 12/10/2010, 8:33 AM

I assume that you want to make DVD discs with AVCHD content that you can play on a Blu-ray player.
......Yes TOG62 that's what I'm after doing.

Thanks

memoryman wrote on 12/11/2010, 10:51 PM

Going to www.videohelp.com and a search on AVCHD will bring up several guides on this topic, though the guides tend to be based on free or nearly free tools. If you have VMS, them probably most of the work-flow can be done in a far more friendly environment. Cheers.

Wovian wrote on 12/13/2010, 2:01 AM

Thanks for your replies guys but I'm trying to keep this process really simple and I believe (hope!) that what I am trying to achieve can be done in VMS 10.

To recap, I'm aware that there has been heaps written on this subject but for now I'm not worried about the playability of the resulting DVD or the discussion about BD5/9.

I have AVCHD footage on the timeline and I would like to render it to DVDAS so that I can burn the DVD.

However when I hit Make Movie in VMS I don't get the option to change the codec. I'm asked to decide between DVD or Blu-Ray and that's all.

Can anybody help me through this process. As I say I'm not worried about the playability issue as I have a Sony Blue Ray player.

Thanks

3POINTgermany wrote on 12/13/2010, 4:55 AM

The trick is that to tell VMS to render for Blu-ray (Make Film/ Blu-ray) and to tell DVDAS that you use a DVD disc instead of a Blu-ray disc. Wow you will burn a DVD with HD-content instead of a blu-ray with HD-content, but remember this DVD is only playable in a Blu-ray player.

Wovian wrote on 12/13/2010, 7:11 AM

Thanks 3PG

Can you be more specific about the rendering for Blue Ray. When I try, after 10 mins or so I get a message "vegas has stoppped working" so I haven't got to the DVDAS menu yet!!!

KenJ62 wrote on 12/13/2010, 12:29 PM

First of all, do you have a Blu-ray player that will play back AVCHD disks? Not all can - and some that claim to play AVCHD do not. The compatibility is somewhat doubtful.

Edit: oops, upon review I see that you have a Sony BD player which should work fine. Try making a really short AVCHD video just to get the kinks ironed out.

Wovian wrote on 12/14/2010, 7:01 AM

Thanks Ken.

Yes I tried to render a 5 min long project and that's when I got the message. "Vegas has stopped working"

So this is what I'm doing:

Project-Render As

Then I have to select -"Save as Type" What shall I select!!!!
"Template" - What shall I select!!!!

If you guys could help me with this window I might be able to make some progress as this must be where I'm going wrong.

Thanks