Help a newbie out buring AVCHD.

[flyin-lowe]

First let me appoligize for my ignorance.
I recently got a new Canon HD hard drive camera. I took some videos on vacation this week. The videos are on my computer in .mts format. I used the software that came with my camera to burn a DVD and I noticed the quality wasn't great. I looked in the book and I had dropped them into the DVD folder and burnt them that way. Reading the book it said that burning them from the DVD folder converts them to standard def. and to burn higher quality video use the AVCHD folder and burn from there. So I did that and the only player that will play theses disk's is the player that came with the software. Windows media won't play it and my stand alone DVD player won't play it. I don't have blue ray and I don't want that I just need to know the best way to get the best quality onto a DVD-R. I don't want to do any editing or nothing like that (at least not now) I just have some family that wants copies of the videos. I can send out the lower quality disk I made as it will play on the stand alones, however if I can get more quality somehow I would like to do this. I downloaded Imgburn but have know idea how to use it. I am going to start experimenting as soon as I finish typing this.
Thanks in advance.

[Baldrick]

What software did you convert to dvd with? You might getter standard dvd quality with different software, even with free software like avs2dvd, but probably not that much better. You wont be able to keep it any hd quality if you want to to work on standalone players.

[flyin-lowe]

The software that came with the camera is called ImageMixer3. It did the conversion. When I open that software it sees all video on my computer and shows them in a window. Then I just have to drag and drop the clips I want into a folder either DVD of AVCHD and hit the burn button. It is pretty simple. The only reason I asked is that there is a chart in the manual for the software that says if you burn it from the AVCHD folder it will still play in stand alone players and is better quality. So far I can't get that to work.

[ranchhand]

I have a Canon HD camcorder and I shoot in AVCHD; last time I did something for a company I just used Imgburn set to "Build" and it created an ISO, and I burned to a DVD and the quality is great. Plays in my Toshiba standalone. Only problem is that when I play it off my computer hard drive it plays fine, but off the DVD drive or in my standalone the action is jerky, not smooth, although the video is hi-def and great. Sound is fine. I am still working on that one (scratches his head).

[jman98]

I have a Canon HD camcorder and I shoot in AVCHD; last time I did something for a company I just used Imgburn set to "Build" and it created an ISO, and I burned to a DVD and the quality is great. Plays in my Toshiba standalone. Only problem is that when I play it off my computer hard drive it plays fine, but off the DVD drive or in my standalone the action is jerky, not smooth, although the video is hi-def and great. Sound is fine. I am still working on that one (scratches his head).

Yes, but when you say "standalone" you mean a BluRay player, NOT a DVD only player. And yes, AVCHD discs will play fine on a PC. The reason they don't play on DVD only players is complicated for newbies to understand, but stated simply it is that standalone DVD players don't understand the format.

I'm not trying to be critical of you, but flyin-lowe is a newbie and as you know people dig up posts years later via Google and other search engines. We need to be perfectly clear here that AVCHD discs will not play in DVD only players so as not to confuse people.

I don't know if this will help you any, but my Momitsu BluRay player has big problems playing 720p AVCHD discs but it does fine with 1080i/p. Does your Canon camcorder shoot in 720p by any chance?

[ranchhand]

Hi Jman... it's high-end is 1080p, and AVCHD. I don't remember if it will do 720 or not. I will admit that I don't have all the experience that most here do in video processing; I can only report what has worked for me. For example, the videos that I brought back from a cruise through the Mediterranean is spectacular. This time I imported into Pinnacle, edited and burned to DVD. Great results. I was lazy last time since it was a inter-corporate event and I just recorded and burned as I described above. Here is a link showing the specs, although I don't think that model is made anymore: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830120290 They change every 6 months, it seems. Thanks for the input...