Author AVCHD from .mov files?

[p_l]

I have a couple of .mov concert video files I'd like to author an AVCHD with, but the AVCHD authoring programs I've tried (Corel DVD MovieFactory 7, ArcSoft TotalMedia Extreme and multiAVCHD) choke on the video (white screen). As far as I can tell with MediaInfo, the .mov contains video which is HDV2 and audio which is LPCM.

General

Complete name : O:\From Sony HDR-CX350V\2010-06-29\Beethoven Sonata The Tempest Op 31 No 2 III Allegretto 2010-06 McGill Gala HD.mov Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : QuickTime Codec ID : qt File size : 1.10 GiB Duration : 5mn 54s Overall bit rate : 26.6 Mbps Encoded date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:49:17 Tagged date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:54:53 Writing library : Apple QuickTime Media/UUID : 2EFA8E56-84EE-444A-8D32-F6218C65A817
Video

ID : 1 Format : hdv2 Codec ID : hdv2 Duration : 5mn 54s Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 25.0 Mbps Width : 1 416 pixels Original width : 1 440 pixels Height : 1 062 pixels Original height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 29.970 fps Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.555 Stream size : 1.03 GiB (94%) Title : Module de gestion vidŽo / Gestionnaire dÕalias Apple Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:49:17 Tagged date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:54:53
Audio

ID : 2 Format : PCM Format settings, Endianness : Little Format settings, Sign : Signed Codec ID : sowt Duration : 5mn 54s Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps Channel(s) : 2 channels Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Bit depth : 16 bits Stream size : 64.9 MiB (6%) Title : Module de gestion sonore / Gestionnaire dÕalias Apple Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:49:17 Tagged date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:54:53
Menu

ID : 3 Title : Gestionnaire code temporel / Gestionnaire dÕalias Apple Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:54:53 Tagged date : UTC 2011-01-07 15:54:53

How can I (losslessly, I hope) author an AVCHD from these files?

[p_l]

To answer my own question, in case anyone comes across this thread with the same problem, after trying some other tools like AviDemux, tsDemux, TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 and AVCHDCoder, all with no success, here's what worked.

1. In Yamb, selected Editing, then "Click to extract streams from AVI/MP4/MOV/TS files."




2. Chose "Extract All Streams to Raw Format."




3. Oddly enough, this produced two .ac3 files(!). The first one took about a minute to generate, so it did seem to be a direct stream copy. It was just about the same size as the source file, so I figured it was the video. Important step: I renamed it to .M2V.

The other file took much longer to generate -- over an hour on my quad core machine -- and it too had an .ac3 file extension. The size was much smaller, though, and I presumed this was the audio.

4. The first file imported slowly but fine into Corel DVD MovieFactory 7. It was video with no sound, but unlike the original source .MOV file, the video displayed and was searchable/editable.

The second file, the smaller .ac3 file, did not import into DVD MovieFactory, giving the error message that the file contained no audio. So instead, as a workaround, I open the video in DVD MovieFactory's Edit Room option, selected the Audio tab, and imported the original .MOV file for its audio. DVDMF was slow in responding, but it eventually accepted it and the video and audio sync up perfectly.




5. I repeated the process for other files I wanted to import and was thus able to produce a very nice AVCHD disc with an attractive and easily customizable menu (one of DVD MF's best features, although not with nearly as many great features and options as the late, lamented Ulead DVD Workshop, 2 which I still don't forgive Corel for buying and killing). It took a couple of hours to process (on my quad core), and the result is about 40% the total size of the source .MOV files containing HDV2 video, so it's obvious the video was re-encoded, presumably to an AVCHD-compliant H.264 codec. It would've been nice to make an AVCHD disc without re-encoding, but it seems pretty sure AVCHD doesn't support HDV2 video, and the result is still a very good-looking High Definition disc.