How to backup multiple AVCHD files to BD-format DVDr without reencoding

[jodal]

Hello!

I have a task I would like to accomplish (my guess is there should be more people interested in the same thing).

I recently bought a Canon HF100 video camera that produces AVCHD in 1920x1080 @ 25p (or 1920x1080 @ 50i). When I shoot I do lots of short clips and I transfer them from a 16GB SDHC card to the harddrive. I store them in folders according to the date they were shot, so I have an increasing number of folders, each with a lot of m2ts-files in them.
Now I want to backup these original AVCHD clips to a DVDr-disk in a bluray-compatible format, i.e. I want to be able to play this DVDr in a BD-player. I do know one way to accomplish this but it has its limitations and I am hoping someone can tell me how to "bypass" them.

While reading around on this forum I came across the following site which is the main source of info for my present
method:
http://www.elurauser.com/articles/avchd_to_bluray.jsp

I have tested it and it works fine but has some limitations in my eyes.

- Firstly, I want to use as much as possible of the 4.38 GB on the DVDr and since I do not have a "matching" 4GB SDHC, I must empty the card, reformat and use the bundled software (Pixela ImageMixer 3 which is a pain in the ass) to record a chosen chunk of 4GB of files back to the card (which is a time consuming process) and then copy the files back to the harddrive with the filestructure intact, rename and burn according to the tutorial above. since I "upgraded" to Vista (There are reason for that) a few days ago, the pain in the ass program does not work so this procedure may not be an option in the future.

-Secondly, thre is no menu or navigation possibilities. I tested the disks with PowerDVD and there is no "skip" function to get to the next clip.

So now finally over to my questions.

1. Is there another way to author an AVCHD disk where you can just select the m2ts-files you want to include and get the correct file structure WITHOUT re-encoding?
I tried Nero Vision 5, suggested elsewhere in this forum, and described e.g. in http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Nero_Vision_5_AVCHD_Authoring_Guide_page1.html, but although I enable "smart encoding" it still re-encodes my m2ts-files (might not like Canons AVCHD-format?). Anyone else with the same camera (Canon HF100 PAL -version) that had any luck with Nero?
TsMuxer seems to do the job if you have just a few clips but since you only can import a single clip at a time it is too timeconsuming for me with around one hundred clips on a DVDr.

2. Is there another way to author an AVCHD disk where you can just select the m2ts-files you want to include and get the correct file structure WITHOUT re-encoding AND have a simple navigation structure so that every clip corresponds to a chapter, i.e. you can start playback and skip to the next clip with a single click on a remote?

3. Even better would be if you could import a folder of clips as a title where every clip corresponds to a chapter so that in when you start playback there is a simple menu with a title button corresponding to every folder, and for every click on the "next" button you skip to the next clip in that folder.

I realize that the points 2 and 3 can be done manually in an authoring software but I am not interested in combining a lot of clips to a single stream and calculate the timing of chapters from the length of the individual clips.

If there is a simple solution to no. 1 I will be glad.
If there is a simple solution to no. 2 I will be really happy.
If there is a simple solution to no. 3 I will be thrilled.
If there is a no solution I will kill myself (no, I take that back).

Thanks

[daveloco]

I'm looking for the same sort of information, however I'm not interested in burning to BDVD. I'm just wanting a way to archive my videos to an external drive in a manner similar to what I do with my digital photos.

With photos I sometimes pull all my files off the card, but usually I don't. Which means I will have several events on there. When I finally get around to it I create a folder with the Year Month Date - Event Description and just put all the photos for that event into that folder. This keeps all of my events in order and I can look through and remember what I did if I'm looking for a certain event.

Now enter AVCHD....

I want to be able to strategically pull out the video files and store them in a folder containing the event. Currently I have to do this after every event, until I find a solution.