Burn Errors due to MPGV ?

[mrlewp]

Regardless of what converter I use to convert my HD m2ts files, there is great loss of quality. If it looks bad on a PC monitor, I imagine how bad it's going to look on large HDTVs.
In an attempt to work around this, I'm using the intact .m2ts files as sources. Using AVS Authoring tool, I hoped that when it does it's thing creating .vob files to burn to DVD, the one-time conversion process would return a better quality video.

1) It's worse ! The DVDs burned using the ".m2ts to .vob" will not play. Jittery at first, then freeze. AND, what I
view on the PC's DVD player appears worse quality then had I first converted to mpg2, then to .vob files.?

2) The vob files produced are shown as .mpgv file types (containers?) instead of .mpg2, when I check details in
any player.

Tried to research this, but keep seeing that the mpgv IS either mpg2, or mpg1 ... ?? No help there.
What I'm going to try now is playing the HD video from the camera in real time, and recording it directly to
whatever type file my recording app will do in best quality. Then to DVD .vob files. This likely will place limitiations on how much editing I can do without quality loss again. (?)
Ideas?

[guns1inger]

First thing to understand - conversion from HD to SD for DVD is going to produce a very visible difference in quality. There is simply no way around this. You are reducing resolution from 1280 x 720 (720p) or 1920 (or 1440) x 1080 (1080i/p) down to 720 x 480/576 (NTSC/PAL). This means throwing away 75% of the video information. When you then watch the same DVD on a HD TV, the SD image then has to be scaled up to HD resolution again.

If you want to preserve the HD quality, you have to author a HD disc, and get a player capable of playing it. If you are stuck with DVDs only for playback, then you will get DVD quality, not HD quality.

I don't know the AVS Authoring Tool, so I cannot comment on it's quality, but because you are resizing down potentially interlaced HD footage, then re-encoding to mpeg-2, there is a lot of potential for poor techniques to produce very bad results.

Recording and encoding in real-time is unlikely to produce better results, and if it does it is because of the butchery of the AVS Authoring Tool, not because it is a better technique.

Personally, I would be looking for a better method of encoding to mpeg-2, if DVD is your only option. AVStoDVD is not affiliated or associated with AVS4YOU or the AVS Authoring Tool. It is free, uses the high quality HCEnc encoder, and should be able to handle your HD files to produce standard DVD output.

A better solution is to author HD material as HD using MultiAVCHD, and to get a capable player - PS3 or suitable bluray player with AVCHD playback capabilities - so you can actually watch HD on your HDTV.