AVCHD Disc with DVD Content

[qtrim]

Hello Fellow VS Enthusiast,

With X4, can you author an AVCHD disc with 720x480 content in H.264 video and AC3 Audio and burn it to a DVD that would be playable in a Blu-Ray player? Because my thought was with an 8.4 DVD disc you could fit a lot more TV shows on one disc, vs backing them up in DVD in Mpeg2 format. In fact with a 25GB Blu-Ray blank, you could probalby get a whole 22 episode season on one disc.

Any experience in that area?

[Ken Berry]

720 x480 is an acceptable AVCHD frame size and so can be burned to an AVCHD hybrid disc. Another question, though, is when are you going to produce AVCHD in that frame size: as a separate step in the editing phase (Share > Create Video File? I ask since there is no option for 720 x 480 if you then choose AVCHD, as its two default options are 1920 x 1080 and 1440 x 1080. So you would have to choose Custom. And there, you would have to select MPEG Transport Stream (.m2t) as the format. On the compression tab of the Options dialogue box, you change the compression type to H.264, and back on the General tab, you change the frame size to 720 x 480. You can also use Make Movie Template Manager to create a template with these properties.

You could also use the format your original video has and after editing, jump straight to Share > Create Disc > AVCHD. But you would then need to uncheck the 'Do not convert compliant MPEG files' box in the Options cogwheel icon down in the bottom left of screen, and change the burning properties up above to have the 720 x 480 frame size. But if, as you apparently intend to do, you make a lot of these discs, then it would probably be better to go the template route described above.

I have one small caveat about your plans, and that is burning an 8.5GB hybrid disc. I suppose it can be done, but I have never burned such a disc so I just don't know. With standard def DVDs burned with previous versions of VS, however, there have been problems with stand-alone DVD players being able to recognise the break into the second part of the disc properly. But again, I have no idea whether a Blu-Ray player may be more forgiving...