I don't think you can burn AVCHD to standard discs directly from the timeline in VMS and preserve the full high-def resolution. I render edited 1920x1080i AVCHD clips to an AVCHD file of the same resolution using VMS 9 Platinum, and then burn that file to a standard disc outside of VMS. The quality is as good as the original clips as far as I can see. (There has to be a little loss of quality because of the render, but it is small enough as to be unnoticeable to me.)

I don't think the type of media you use makes any difference in quality. Now this is assuming you burn AVCHD at the original high-def resolution and bitrate to standard DVD's rather than down-rezzing it to standard resolution DVD mpeg-2.

As you probably know, Blu-ray discs have a much higher capacity that will allow a longer video than standard DVD's. But I think the quality of the picture on your HDTV would be identical. And as you also probably know, if you burn AVCHD to a standard DVD disc it can only be played back on certain Blu-ray players and the PS3.

If I am wrong about the quality, hopefully someone will correct me.

Video quality (for any given format and resolution) is dependent on the bitrate it's recorded at. But you can't improve the quality by increasing the bitrate beyond what the original source was. Bottom line, the highest bitrate AVCHD source material you can record is at 24Mbps. The highest bitrate any DVD can play back is 18Mbps. The highest bitrate any Blu-ray disk can play back (currently) is, I think, 40Mbps. So, for AVCHD, 24Mbps is the limiting factor, and the question becomes is the difference between 24Mbps (AVCHD on Blu-ray) and 18Mbps (AVCHD on DVD) very significant? (I'm assuming your AVCHD source actually is 24Mbps; not all camcorders can shoot at that high of a bitrate. If yours can't the question is moot and AVCHD on DVD is as good as you can get, equal to Blu-ray.)

The other issue is that Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9's highest AVCHD rendered bitrate is 16Mbps (with the Sony AVC codec). So, whether you record your video onto a DVD or onto a Blu-ray disk, the best you can do is 16Mbps with it. The data is digital. It makes no difference which media type it is on for any given bitrate and codec, regarding quality.

Another thing to consider is that in generaly HD material downgraded to SD for a DVD is often a lower quality that native SD material.

I see questions here, and on the Vegas Pro forum on that same topic quite often.

Thanks guys - sorry I was not clearer in my question - as Sony tech has beaten into me - you can burn a AVCHD time line to a DVD but only with w BD writer... I think the answer to my intended question is that the disc type really does not matter much except in capacity . I am a little disappointed in the quality of the video I am getting from the "HD" DVD I am burning in VNS - think I need to find out if there is a way to eliminate any recompression steps - Have found in SD with .avi files that if you can stop the recompression each time you render or save that the video quality is visibly improved.. If I get lucky will post here ... K

There is a tremendous amount of confusion all over the internet and elsewhere about this point.

You do NOT need a Blu-ray writer to create an AVCHD DVD! An AVCHD DVD is really and truly high definition, 1980x1080 if that's what you recorded to it.

DVD media does NOT have any inherent or specific format or maximum resolution. What DVD media has is a maximum transfer rate. (Proof: you can record anything you want on a DVD, from Excel spreadsheets to executable programs to Powerpoint presentations to text files to video of any format to any other file type that has ever existed or ever will exist. DVD is just a media for storing bits. DVDs rotate at a specific rate and those bits have a specific size and spacing, and those two factors completely determine the maximum transfer rate. Blu-ray disks also rotate at a specific rate but have smaller size bits so more of them pass by per rotation for a faster bitrate, and more of them fit on the media. Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light and that is what allows smaller bits. Blu-ray recorders and players use blue light, and DVD recorders and players use red light.)

Now, if a video disk is being created on DVD media, a specific format with specific resolutions must be used, depending of which type of video disk is being created. SD video DVDs, such as what DVD Architect Studio creates or what movie studios make and sell at Walmart or where ever use that particular format with its particular features and restrictions. AVCHD video DVDs have an entirely different particular format which has its own particular features and restrictions. Blu-ray video disks also have another particular format which has its own particular features and restrictions (rather similar to AVCHD).

I have never tried recording an AVCHD disk directly from VMSP9's timeline, so I can't say whether that particular approach requires a BD writer or not. Actually, VMSP9 does not have the ability to create AVCHD format disks (regardless of media); among all HD formats, it has only the ability to create BD format disks (regardless of media).

Talking about this is so confusing because people (and terminology) confuses the media with the format. They are independent. You can record Blu-ray format onto a CD, and you can record SD format video onto a Blu-ray disk. Whether or not your player will play it, and whether or not it meets specifications is an entirely different matter. Unfortunately, the same word has sloppily been used for both the media and for the format. That makes it extremely hard to talk about.

In any case, the Vegas timeline is not the only way to record HD onto optical media, and the way I have presented before tells exactly how to record AVCHD onto DVD media using a DVD writer without loss of quality. I have done this and it works.

Also, KenJ62 presented a very interesting method that I have not yet had a chance to try. Unfortunately, he didn't say whether he used a DVD writer or a BD writer in his computer, but I assume he used a DVD writer. KenJ62, are you reading this? Let us know. In any case, I believe this created the Blu-ray format on DVD media.

KenJ62 tested his method with his Sony Blu-ray disc player. I tested my method with my Panasonic Blu-ray disc player. Those may be the only two brands of Blu-ray disc players that play AVCHD DVDs. He says his plays perfectly and looks great. Mine plays perfectly and looks great. The only reduction in quality in mine is that I started with 24Mbps source material, and rendered it down to a 16Mbps video stream. But, the DVD media did not degrade anything, just the reduction in bitrate I used during rendering.

Given that VMSP9's Sony AVC codec renders at a maximum of 16Mbps, which is below the DVD media's maximum transfer rate, recording your AVCHD video rendered with VMSP9 onto a DVD will have exactly the same image quality as if recorded onto a Blu-ray disc. The only difference you can take advantage of is that Blu-ray media has a greater capacity than DVD media. (The Blu-ray format has more features than the AVCHD format, but VMSP9 doesn't support them so you can't take advantage of them, except maybe by what KenJ62 has described.)

That's a whole lot of words to basically say that knockatoone's conclusions of his previous post are correct. Just trying to clear things up. ;^) All image degradation occurs due to the compression during rendering, not due to the media it's recorded onto.

Dave,
You keep writing and I'll keep learning !!!

Back to bit rates -Sony does not want to tell me the bit rate I can expect from my camcorder ?? It is not in the specs and I have to make a special request thru customer service ??? they sure can make it (unnecessarily) tuff - I have mapped out your bit rate numbers and understand. I went into some of my ".m2ts file's properites hoping to find bit rates -I only found video "total birates" which vary from 4mbts to almost 10mbts betwen file - these files are straight out of the camera on to the PC Hdd using Sony PMG (the Camcorder's bundle utility). Can "total bit rates" be meaningfully compared to the numbers you gave out - are they the same things? My above about seeing quality loss (AVCH time line to DVD) was a comparison of playing the AVCHD video from the camera thru HDMI connection on a HD TV and seeing the same footage on the same TV from the VMS DVD on a bluray player ... Just not quite as crystal clear and super sharp ... will look for ways to eliminate any "compressions" .... as it appears I am not on the high end of the bit rate scale...so need to look els where.....
Thanks again, K

Dave,
You keep writing and I'll keep learning !!!

Back to bit rates -Sony does not want to tell me the bit rate I can expect from my camcorder ?? It is not in the specs and I have to make a special request thru customer service ??? they sure can make it (unnecessarily) tuff - I have mapped out your bit rate numbers and understand. I went into some of my ".m2ts file's properites hoping to find bit rates -I only found video "total birates" which vary from 4mbts to almost 10mbts betwen file - these files are straight out of the camera on to the PC Hdd using Sony PMG (the Camcorder's bundle utility). Can "total bit rates" be meaningfully compared to the numbers you gave out - are they the same things?
My above about seeing quality loss (AVCH time line to DVD) was a comparison of playing the AVCHD video from the camera thru HDMI connection on a HD TV and seeing the same footage on the same TV from the VMS DVD on a bluray player ... Just not quite as crystal clear and super sharp ... will look for ways to eliminate any "compressions" as it appears I am not on the high end of the bit rate scale........
Thanks again, K

That's interesting about your Sony Camcorder. I have a Canon camcorder (Vixia HF 200) and its owner's manual also does not tell the bitrates of the different quality modes. The only places that list the bitrates are on the Canon website and displayed on the LCD screen where you select the quality mode. You'd think the specifications in the owner's manual or the section that documents how to set the quality mode would say what the bitrates are!

I'm not sure what "total bitrates" means....

But, there actually is a pretty easy way to determine the bitrates of the various quality/compression modes of your camcorder. Shoot some video. Transfer it to your computer. Determine the video's file size in bytes (right click on the file in Windows Explorer and look at Properties - but don't be fooled by the units... Windows usually shows large file sizes in kilobytes or megabytes or gigabytes, not in bytes, so you have to convert what they tell you to bytes). Divide that file size by the length of the video in seconds. That gives you the bytes per second. Multiply that by eight and you will have your bitrate.

That should be pretty accurate unless the video you shoot is something that compresses much more than usual. For example, if you shoot a uniform solid color, like black, and it never changes the entire video, then it will compress like crazy (assuming your camcorder uses variable bit rate encoding) and still maintain high quality. So, shoot a normal subject and either move the camcorder, zoom the lens, or have the subject move to make sure things compress normally. Also, you'll have better accuracy if your video is of significant length, like say at least 30 seconds.

Regardless of what bitrate your camcorder is shooting at, if you are noticing a significant degradation between playing a video from your camcorder through its HDMI connection direct to your TV as compared to that same video recorded onto an AVCHD DVD and played on your Blu-ray disk player, then you are losing something in the translation (presumably and most likely due to the compression rendering your video for the AVCHD DVD, but also possibly the Blu-ray disk player... is it connected to your TV through a HDMI cable, as well?).

I think you can create a test AVCHD DVD without rendering it at all and therefore avoid all re-compression losses. Shoot some AVCHD video at any bitrate but no higher than 18Mbps. Transfer that video file to your computer. Use multiAVCHD to create an AVCHD DVD of that video (multiAVCHD does not re-compress any video so it won't alter the image quality). Play that AVCHD DVD in your Blu-ray player and then play the original of that video file from your camcorder through its HDMI connection direct on your TV. Both AVCHD video clips should be identical in quality, which should allow you to compare the quality of your Blu-ray player and its connection to your TV versus your camcorder and its connection to your TV. If the Blu-ray player output is worse, then you know the problem is something with that hardware or connection.

The Blu Ray player is connected with an HDMI cable. It does a super job with comerical BD movies and is pretty much my standard.
By passing the rendering is of interest in trying a test - what is "multiAVCHD" .......
I tried the bit rate calculaton on 2 existing m2ts files both 24-25 secs long - one contained 12.9 MB and the other 26.6 MB - I used the full byte count for both calculations but obvicously I got 2 very different bit rates -both videos were taken on the same day at the same location with the same camera settings / same natural lighting and are of mountain scenery . I must have a variable rate camera as you mentioned ?? Both came out very close to the listed "total bit rate" I mentioned earlier ...
My camera has 4 settings for HD recording and each has a number = HD FH=AVC HD 16M, the next is HD HQ = AVC HD 9M and so on to 7M and 5M. I have asked Sony what the 16 M tells me ?? maybe this will help with knowing the max bit rate -- or not...?? will advise if they tell me anything meaningful ...
... K

Dave,
Just heard from sony tech support and as hoped - the numbers are the "Average bit rate" for each quality selection (16= 16 MB for the highest quality). So now I can plug my camera into your list of bit rates and see what I should be doing .. Intersting how asking the same question a different way will ofter get you the answer - earlier I asked for the camera bit rate and got "humma humma" and no real answer .. :-) . Thanks for the education ..
Still want to try the AVCHD test with out rendering ...

knockatoone,

multiAVCHD is a freeware program that takes one or more AVCHD files and creates all the supplemental files and structure necessary for creating an AVCHD DVD. It also lets you create a menu for your AVCHD DVD, so that makes it something like DVD Architect Studio in a sense. (You don't have to create a menu, though.) multiAVCHD creates all these files on your computer hard disk. You need another program to take them and burn them onto a DVD using the required AVCHD DVD file system. ImgBurn, another free program, can do that. ImgBurn lets you choose which file system to use; you must set it to UDF 2.50 for an AVCHD DVD.

You can google multiAVCHD and ImgBurn to find websites where you can download them for free.

MediaInfo will give you the average and maximum bitrates of almost any media file.

David:

Do you know if it's possible to burn HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080, 29.970 fps) to a standard DVD but not downgrade to SD?

Currently I am downgrading all my HDV footage to SD and burning a disc with menus through DVD-Architect. The quality is good (better than my old SD footage), but one day I would like to burn discs in HDV.

Kim

Sony will tell you you have to have a BD burner to take AVCHD from the VMS time line to a DVD. David says not true and he is ,of course, correct - you need to render to your Hdd (= AVCHD file) in VMS (probably get an ".iso" file) and then go outside VMS to a DVD burner that will open the ".iso" file and just burn the DVD. Only quality loss you should see is the unavoidable rendering losses. Dave gives a free DVD burner program above ( it is a software need not hardware) but other programs such as Roxio and Power2go will burn your DVD..
K ( a student of Dave's)

Kimberly,

The answer to your question is: yes, but....

You can render whatever you want, including your HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080, 29.970 fps), to AVCHD or Blu-ray output in Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum, and then, one way or another, as knockatone suggested, create an AVCHD DVD, which you can do not only on standard DVD media, but also with a standard DVD writer in your computer. There are just two stipulations: your rendered output must have a bitrate that DVD media supports (which means it must be 18Mbps or less), and your rendered output must be small enough to fit on a DVD (about 4.7GB for a single layer DVD, something like 8.5GB for a dual-layer DVD).

The "gotcha" part is that not everything will play AVCHD DVDs. AVCHD is a specification created jointly several years ago by Sony and Panasonic, and any vendor (i.e., Blu-ray disk player manufacturer) that wants to support it has to buy a license from them to use it. If they have bought the license, then they can display the AVCHD logo on their products and play it. (AVCHD is nearly the same as Blu-ray, so it should actually be very easy from a technical standpoint for any manufacturer to support both. Many manufacturers of early Blu-ray players supported AVCHD DVDs but hadn't licensed the right (and didn't display the AVCHD logo); they have since gone to the effort of disabling AVCHD support in firmware updates to their older Blu-ray players, and don't support it in their newer ones.) I have not done an exhaustive search, but the only Blu-ray disk player manufacturers I know of that support AVCHD are Sony and Panasonic. But like I said, if the AVCHD logo is on a product, then you should always be able to play an AVCHD DVD in it.

(Incidentally, the AVCHD standard was created when the first HD camcorders that didn't use tape were developed... and those HD camcorders used DVD disks to record on! Support and use of flash memory came later. So, right from the start and with explicit intentions, AVCHD has always been compatible with standard DVD media! That's why it was created: to tweak the Blu-ray HD standard to make it suitable for DVD media. But today, most people have forgotten about the early HD camcorders that recorded on DVDs and believe that AVCHD is only compatible with flash memory and computer hard disks, even though they were actually the second thoughts.)

And then, there's always a plan B: you can record your HDV videos directly to standard DVDs as data files (no need for AVCHD anything), and then play those data files on any computer that has an HDV compatible video player. But there are probably no DVD players or Blu-ray disk players that will recognize such DVDs and play them on TVs.

So, unfortunately, there is no universally compatible way of creating HD videos on DVD media.