Do I have to use AVCHD?

[James Nicol]

I have been burning hd-dvd disks in the past. My camera takes HDV movies and I have been very happy with the results.
Now that hd-dvd is gone bye bye I'm moving over to Blu_Ray.
I bought a Blu_Ray burner though still haven’t used it yet as I’m still confused about the format.
If I’m to watch my high def movies on a blu-ray player, must I convert my hdv to avchd? Or is this just a format used to squish them on to 4.7 or double layer dvd's?
I have done this a couple of times and the quality is not near as good.
When I play my high def video straight from the camera tape on my hdtv the picture quality is outstanding, when I made me hd-dvd disks there was no quality loss, both looked the same. When I made an avchd at the best settings (around 17000 kbps) the quality was nowhere near as good.
If I burn my movie straight on to a 25g blu-ray disk, using my blue ray burner, does this convert my hdv movie to an avchd one and can I expect the same poorer quality?
Does a blu-ray player only play avchd movies?
Is there some way I can improve the quality so it looks the same as it does off the camera?
Does the software used to edit my movies make a difference to the quality?
There that’s about 7 questions, hope someone can enlighten me. Thanks in advance

[Bruce Foreman]

Pinnacle Studio Version 12, just announced to Studio 11 users a few days ago, will feature authoring to BluRay disks. If version 11 (which I use currently) is any indication, version 12 will do this from HDV or from AVCHD and quality should be excellent.

Now, nothing may quite match what you see going from your camera to the TV using HDMI, but I revisited an HV20 project I had not been able to see the edited version in HD, and re-rendered it to AVCHD then rendered from the timeline to a 1280x720p Windows Media File to upload to vimeo. You can see it here:

http://www.vimeo.com/1043803

Both versions look great on my Samsung 21.6" monitor, and the AVCHD version on disk played in a BluRay player at Best Buy looks very good on a 42" LCD.

Salesman's comment: "Not shabby".

Pinnacle Studio version 12 will probably hit the shelves late this month or sometime next.

[Tony Spring]

Blu-ray is compatable with HDV (MPEG2) & AVCHD (MPEG4). You can use Ulead Movie Factory to author HDV to Blu-ray without any conversion.

[James Nicol]

Thanks for the response to my questions.
I'm looking forward to studio12.
Right now I"m dabbling with Ulead.
Does anyone know what file format I should save my video as?

HDV
1080i 60i (for HVD)
1080i 60i (for PC)
HD-DVD
NTSC HD DVD -1920
NTSC HD DVD -1440
Blu-Ray
NTSC HDMV - 1920
NTSC HDMV - 1440
AVCHD
H.264 (1920 x 1080, 29.27 fps)
H.264 (1440 x 1080, 29.27 fps)
I want to store the files in the best quality possible, same as it comes off the DV tape, so I was thinking HDV 1080i 60i (for HVD).
On the other hand.....
I'm planning on burning to Blu_ray dvd's, so Iam thinking the Blu_ray NTSC HDMV - 1440. Would that be interlaced?

[Saif Faris]

I am also very interested in this topic.

Thanks