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Fair warning: This is an odd question, to which the final answer will probably be "No", but I have to ask anyhow, just in case, LOL
I have several videos that were originally filmed during the 1980s on camcorders and years later were converted to .VOB (TS_VIDEO) files and burned to individual DVDs. I recently used Handbrake to convert them to .MP4 files while keeping the original aspect ratios and frame rates from the VOB files.
Because they are all related topics (family, etc) I would like to burn them all to a single blu-ray disc but have no idea whether PD20 will be able to combine them because of the disparity in resolutions and frame rates.
The produced files are:
Video A.mp4 which was originally filmed in 1986, is 352 x 240, at 29.97 fps
Video B.mp4 which was originally filmed in 1988, is 720 x 538, at 30 fps
Video C.mp4 (actually a narrated photo slideshow created in 2001) is 1920 x 1080, at 30 fps
I also have a fourth video (filmed in 2006) that is still just on a DVD that I need to convert via Handbrake. The on-disc video is composed of four .VOB files; they are all 720 x 480, at 29.97 fps. I am assuming that what I need to do is to convert each of them to .MP4 via Handbrake, then bring them into PD20 and produce one final combined .MP4 which would be Video D (720 x 480, at 29.97).
So what I would ultimately want PD20 to do is to produce a blu-ray disc that contains four MP4 videos despite the fact that each is at a different resolution, and with two of them being at 29.97 fps and the other two at 30 fps.
Assuming that PD doesn't figuratively throw up its cyberhands in disgust and crash at the very notion, which encoding format should I choose? H.264 or MPEG-2?
With either of those encoding formats, neither 29.97 nor 30 fps are available as quality options. In SD there is only 720 x 480 at 60i; and in HD, the only progressive choices are 24p and 60p. The resulting blu-ray discs would be given to family members. Some would be viewing it on a computer with a blu-ray drive, and others would be viewing it on a tv, played on either a blu-ray player or a PS4. Hence my wanting to avoid using interlaced.
Are all of these 'mismatched' videos too disparate to pull together nicely on a single blu-ray disc?
Thanks!
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Coincidentally, I downloaded the trial version of Topaz the other day just to see if it could do anything with those two worst clips. They are both in .3GP format, so I first ran them through VLC to convert them to .MOV (discovered that not all conversion options retained the audio, but .MOV did.)
For some reason, Handbrake refuses to launch for me (Windows 10). I can install it but when I try to launch it, it tells me that I am missing a driver that my computer DOES indeed have - but that Handbrake apparently can't "see". I've tried uninstalling and re-installing Handbrake but it gives me that error message every time. However, VLC does work.
So I brought the converted files (as MOV) into the Topaz trial version. Topaz doesn't even recognize a native frame rate of 10 or 15, but "thought" that the original frame rate was in the 20s. Also, some of the conversion models eliminated the audio (had to select Transcode in the audio option.) But as far as improving the footage, Topaz could do absolutely nothing. No real surprise, I guess.
As long as I had the trial version, I also tried it on a clip of an old garden video from 1988 which had been converted to .MP4 and has a resolution of 352 x 240 at 30 FPS. Clip is a bit less than 4 mins long, and I tried upscaling it to 1920 x 1080 at the same frame rate. Topaz took almost 2 hours to do that, and introduced so many artifacts that the result would be unwatchable on a tv-size screen. Was bad enough on a 17" desktop monitor, lol.
Topaz is probably awesome at upscaling SD or HD footage to either FHD or 4K, but it's clear that there's simply not enough data for it to work with if confronted with footage that is lower than 640 x 480. Which is understandable.
As for my compilation project, it looks like either 29.970 or 30 is probably the frame rate to aim for. One of those two clips that are just under 60 FPS is, as per Murphy's Law, by far the longest: almost 27 minutes (the other is only four minutes; different occasion.) Going to be a lot of dropped frames if it has to go from 59.940 to 29.970 and of course because it's a birthday event, the audio is important.
This is the first time I've had to deal with footage from multiple sources rather than footage that I've all shot myself on the same equipment (either a camcorder, a DSLR, or a GoPro) throughout each project and always in landscape orientation. This is because I've only recently (as in last month) acquired a phone that has a halfway decent camera (iPhone), lol. I still prefer a "real" camera though, to be honest. Guess I'm the outlier, lol
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Okay, so I have 25 individual video clips of grandchild, taken at various times by different people on different devices, between 2018 and 2022.
What I'd like to do is to put them all on a single blu-ray, somehow or other (whether each in its own video file per occasion - such as birthday, christmas, etc - or individually in single or groups of one, two or three clips that were taken in succession.)
Here are the resolutions and frame rates that I'm faced with. They are also a mix of portrait and landscape orientations but honestly, that's the least of my problems here, LOL
(the following info is from MediaInfo per file)
Resolutions:
Two clips are 175 x 144
One clips is 320 x 430
Four clips are 720 x 1280
Eighteen clips are 1920 x 1080
Frame rates:
Two clips are at 10 fps
One clip is at 15 fps
One clip is at 29.672 fps
One clip is at 29.886 fps
One clip is at 29.970 fps
Eight clips are at 30.000 fps
One clip is at 59.289 fps
One clip is at 59.940 fps
Faced with this crazy assortment of resolutions and frame rates, any suggestions on how best to approach putting them on a single disc? It has to be on either blu-ray or a double sided DVD (blu-ray preferred) because several of the people who would be getting the resulting disc don't even own a computer, but they do have either a DVD player or blu-ray player.
I downloaded a trial copy of Topaz Video AI earlier today because I do want to see if anything at all can be done with those seven less-than-1920/1080 clips which, as you can imagine, are pretty awful. The two lowest quality ones are also the 10 and 15 fps clips. The 1280/702 clips are at least close to 30fps, which seems to be the frame rate to kind of aim for. (the two that are close to 60 fps are the ones I took with a GoPro and with an iPhone, respectively.)
Suggestions? Ideas? Thanks!
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I'm planning to use PD20 (lifetime license, not 365) to create a blu-ray containing about a dozen videos from my grandchild's first couple of years. All of them are MP4s except for two that were shot on a phone in .3GP format. Those two clips look absolutely HORRENDOUS when viewed on a computer - noisy, grainy, blurry - and so I assume they would look equally awful on a tv screen.
So I checked the supported file formats in PD20 itself, and it does include 3GPP2 as one of them. However, this is what MediaInfo says about the two video clips that I have:
MPEG-4 (3GPP Media Release 5), 325 kiB, 30 sec 427 ms
1 video stream: H.263
1 audio stream: AMR
First video stream: 79.9 kb/s, 176*144 (4.3) at 10,000 FPS, H.263
It looks to me as if PD20 cannot use these files because they are only 3GPP / H.263 rather than 3GPP2 / H.264. Is that correct? (If so, very disappointing because these are two of her 'first words' video clips.)
Again looking at my PD20 user guide, it only mentions MPEG4 as MPEG-4 AVC (H.264). Does that mean that PD20 does not support H.263 video files at all?
It seems illogical that there wouldn't be a way to upconvert H.263 to H.264, especially as there must be scads of H.263 video clips around from "back in the day", lol
Thanks for any advice! 
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This is all very interesting!
@tomasc, on my old Panasonic machine a DVD-R disk burned at AVC-HD 1920 x 1080 60i would play, but with the shimmering/glittering artifacts appearing in all fine-detail areas. A blu-ray disk of the same production file, burned at 1920 x 1080 60p, could not display video at all; only audio and a black screen.
The new Sony machine will play a three-video, blu-ray 1920 x 1080 60p disk beautifully, with no artifacts and improved audio. The same production on double layer DVD+R DL disk burned at 1920 x 1080 60i will play, but with the same shimmering/glittering effect as was seen in the old player and with audio that sounded slightly muffled/less clear. I noticed the difference in the audio as I watched one after the other and the blu-ray audio is definitely clearer.
@JL_JL, funny you should mention the 1280x720/60p option because as yet another test the other day, I burned one of the three videos that were included on the other two disks to a fresh DVD-R (single layer) as AVC-HD but this time choosing that resolution instead of 1920 x 1080 60i as before. And voila! No shimmering/glittering artifacts at all when played. Of course, I could only fit one of the three videos on the single layer disk but it was sufficient for a test of the two highest available AVC-HD resolutions in PowerDirector20 based on frame rate alone.
So the two 'best choices' for an AVC-HD disk appear to be 1280/720/60p (if I want the burn to match the shooting and editing frame rate, and have no shimmering effect in fine detail areas) or 1920/1080/60i (if I want the higher resolution but must accept that it will display 'shimmer/glitter' in fine detail areas, possibly because the frame rate was converted from progressive to interlaced.)
The appearance of the video at 1280 x 720 resolution AVC-HD is acceptable, and much better than the standard DVD 720x480 alternative, LOL. The non-blu-ray burn audio is inferior but would be most noticeable by someone who has viewed the blu-ray version first, as I did. 
A shame that PowerDirector eliminated support for 1920 x 1080 60p for AVC-HD after PD15.
A question just to clarify: A DVD-R or DVD+R DL disk that is burned at 1280/720/60p will be AVC-HD 1.0, correct? and thus should play in anyone's player, even those that would not support an AVC-HD 2.0 blu-ray version of the same video?
If so, then I will stock up on DVD+R DL disks for people who either don't have a blu-ray player or who have one that was made more than five years ago and thus might not be 2.0 compliant. That should allow me to squeeze more than one video onto each disk, depending on file size. The videos were shot chronologically, so it is very helpful to be able to have more than one per disk.
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Just a quick update with the results of my final experimentation with the best production and burning formats for GoPro footage that was shot at 1920 x 1080, 60p
Took three videos, all shot at that same resolution, through PD20 which resulted in a .PDS file for each one.
The total size of the three videos was a little over 7000 GB, and I wanted them all on a single disc. Thus, my choices were either a blu-ray or a DVD+R DL, given that a normal DVD-R did not have enough space.
Went into Create Disc in PD, selected a menu template and set the font, etc, for the Scenes page (no Root page needed/wanted), and brought the three PD projects into it. Then chose 2D Disc, AVC-HD in the best available format which is 1920 x 1080 60i. (No 60p available) Created that on a DVD+R DL.
Repeated the process again without changing anything at all except now selected Blu-ray as the 2D media, and format as 1920 x 1080 60p (which is a match for the original footage AND the editing.) Created that, and then watched both discs, blu-ray first.
The video quality was perfect (way better than how the .MP4 file of the same video looks on my computer, lol), and the audio reflected a tweak that I had done to one clip because of weather conditions that day. Hugely impressed and happy. Then watched the AVC-HD version.
Really did not expect the two differences between them but it was bigtime apparent. Not only did the audio sound muffled throughout (even the not-needing-tweaks footage was inferior to the blu-ray, and the tweaked audio didn't sound any better at all), but the footage itself was noticeably different. Colors were fine, but any shots that included any areas of fine detail (gravel pathways, mulch, even areas of soil where there were lots of scattered pebbles or rocks, chain link fencing, etc) appeared to 'shimmer' in a sort of 'glittery' effect -- the way a photo does if it is over-sharpened in an editor. I found this very distracting. Any shots where the camera was moving also had the same effect although at a lower level (I admit that I began looking for it, don't know if a casual viewer would notice or not) even when looking at areas that didn't have a ton of detailed edges. But anything with an edge, wow, those edges shimmered and glittered very noticeably.
None of that is in the blu-ray footage.
So my guess(?) is that when the AVC-HD production converts the 60(p) frame rate to 60(i), the conversion process shows up in the edge and/or contrast detail as a shimmer/glitter. Because using the same frame rate from start to finish did not result in this effect.
If that's what causes the shimmer/glitter effect, why doesn't the AVC-HD disk option include 60(p), like the Blu-ray option does? Is there something in the AVC format that prevents encoding in progressive rather than interlaced? Just curious.
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It's so disappointing to hear that there is no stand-alone version of ColorDirector, because I just purchased the lifetime license version of PowerDirector20. I have no interest in getting involved with a subscription version of anything.
From what I have read here, ColorDirector is the only PD product that would allow me to change the color of a specific object. In my case it would be to correct the color of flowers; flowers that are in the pink/magenta color family are problematic on some video cameras, and blues are tricky as well. The Fix/Enhance tools in PD20 only work globally on the entire image and cannot isolate a specific color or object.
I know that this can be done with more advanced editors such as Premiere Pro, etc, but to get involved with one of those just for a single feature would be illogical. Plus, I think those are only subscription-based nowadays as well.
I suppose there is no chance that any future PD updates will add a single-color Replacement or Enhancement function?
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Ideally, I'd want to be able to produce any of all of three types of disks that will be viewed on a tv (55" or larger): a blu-ray, an AVC-HD DVD, and a standard DVD that anyone's player would be able to handle, regardless of age. That's because these will be sent to people and the type of player they have will vary.
For instance, I'll ask "do you have a blu-ray player and if so, how long ago did you buy it". If they say they bought it within the past five years, I'd burn the videos to a blu-ray at the highest available quality. But if they bought the player ten years ago, odds are that it won't be able to handle a blu-ray that has AVC-HD 2.0 (I know this because I just had to replace mine for that reason, LOL), so I'd burn an AVC-HD DVD-R for them instead. And if they have a standard (non-blu ray) player that was made decades ago, I'd have to burn in standard quality MPEG-2.
No plans to put any of these online, at least not in the near future and even then only as short clips on Vimeo to be inserted into blog posts. But as you say, the .MP4 files will be fine for that. I'm looking to improve the quality (especially the audio) on the disk renditions.
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Not sure about the best way to go about this (if there is one). Here's what I have and what I'd like to do if possible:
During the 1990s, I recorded a number of videos using a camcorder, a few directly onto VHS tape and the others onto Mini DV tapes.
In the early 2000s, a friend of mine got a Memorex box that, when connected between a videocassette player and a computer, could convert on-tape videos to digital files. I borrowed it and then used a video editor (whose name I can't recall other than that it was made by Turtle Beach) to burn the resulting files to Memorex DVD+R RW discs.
MediaInfo sees the following folders on those DVDs:
AUDIO_TS (which is empty)
VIDEO_TS (which contains 8 files):
Video_TS.BUP 6 kb
Video_TS.IFO 6 kb
VTS_01_0.BUP 42 kb
VTS_01_0.IFO 42 kb
VTS_01_1.VOB 1,048,160 KB (in the example that I'm using here)
VTS_01_2.VOB 1,048,510 KB
VTS_01_3.VOB 1,048,016 KB
VTS_01_4.VOB 763,552 KB
Looking at the VTS_01.1.VOB file with MediaInfo, I see that the format is MPEG-PS and,
Video:
Format: MPEG video
Format version: 2
Format profile: Main@Main
Bit rate mode: Variable
Bit rate: 7871 kbps
Frame rate: 29.970 fps
Scan type: interlaced
Compression mode: Lossy
Audio:
Format: PCM
Format settings: Big/Signed
Muxing mode: DVD-Video
Bit rate mode: Constant
Bit rate: 1536 kps
Sampling rate: 48.0 kHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Two years ago I wanted to have a backup of those DVDs on one of my external drives, so I used Wondershare Uniconverter to convert the DVD videos to .mp4 files for backup The same video that I show above is now also this .mp4 file:
General:
Format: MPEG-4
Codec ID: mp42
Overall bit rate: 10.1 mb/s
Video:
Format: AVC
Bit rate: 9 999 kb/s
Frame rate: 30.000 fps
Color space: YUV
Scan type: progressive
Audio:
Format AAC LC
Codec ID: mp4a-40-2
Bit rate: 128 kb/s
Sampling rate: 44.1 khz
Frame rate: 43.066 fps
Compression mode: Lossy
Here's the issue:
Because most of these videos were shot outdoors, they all have anywhere from a moderate to significant amount of background noise (traffic noise, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, etc) which is distracting. I see that PowerDirector20 / AudioDirector has some options for fixing audio, including Speech Enhancement and Background Noise Removal. So I'm wondering if the audio on these old videos can be cleaned up in that way.
So here's my question: Because I have all of these videos in two formats (on DVDs and also as .MP4 files), which 'source' would be better to bring into PowerDirector... and how best to do that? I have read that it's always best to work with the original video files because any kind of conversion process inevitably results in quality degradation, but in this case true originals (the tapes) are long gone.
As far as the video quality, the DVDs that came from the mini-DV tapes look pretty decent (though could benefit from some color correction occasionally) when viewed on a tv; the DVDs won't play on my computer. The oldest video, which was shot directly onto a standard VHS tape in 1992, would need the most work on the video but less on the audio.
The .MP4 files made from those DVDs look the same as the DVD if I plug the drive into my player's USB port (my tv's USB port won't recognize either of my external drives) but those same MP4s look horrible if I play them on the computer. The audio quality is the same regardless of what is played where.
What would be the best approach to trying to clean up the audio (which is narration with distracting background noises) on these videos, and what file format would be best for that?
I do realize that every time a video is encoded, it gets somewhat more "trashed".  I also see that PowerDirector supports importing .VOB files - would that be the best way to approach this? and if so...how? Or I could do a fresh DVD-to-MP4 conversion using Power2Go 13, if that would make the workflow simpler.
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The new Sony player played my test PD blu-ray disc just fine (after I returned the first machine which turned out to have been a re-sealed, previously-used open-box one that Walmart shipped to me instead of "new", and got a replacement at the store where I had to return the bad one, lol)
So now good to go; next up will be learning how to replace the existing audio in my next video's footage with a voiceover. But have already found some posts there with great info on that.
Thanks so much! 
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Cyberlink Power2Go is free and works similar to the others in that you add any format video files in which each is a new chapter and then burn to a dvd. They are easier to use for some users.
Funny you should mention P2Go because a version (9?) came with this computer when I bought it several years ago. It worked fine for standard DVDs and CDs but it didn't support converting certain file types or burning to blu-ray; a pop-up told me that for those functionalities I'd need to upgrade to the paid P2Go13 (actually it nagged me incessantly to do that, lol). Eventually the nags got so annoying that I uninstalled it in a fit of pique, lol
At the time, Wondershare Uniconverter was on sale and so I bought that. It worked great for converting the files (at least, for what I wanted to do at that moment) and it has a burn function but....surprise surprise, blu-ray burning or file types are not supported. And their video editor (Filmora) doesn't burn anything, just saves to file. Actually Filmora is what I dumped in favor of PD20. One thing I did NOT know when I bought Filmora was that the program simply will not work offline. One of the many things that Wondershare doesn't mention up front, lol.
The free/trial version of Power2Go only allows the premium functions for 30 days; after that, the nagging to upgrade to P2Go13 begins. And burning blu-rays is still a premium function only. But there are several other functions that would be very handy not only to have but to have in a single program. So I'll go for the paid version.
Thanks for the heads-up on the blu-ray player, I was able to find the Sony in stock at my local Walmart and will pick it up tomorrow. I will pop in the BDMV test blu-ray disc that would only produce audio in my current machine and see if it flies. If so, my available-space-on-disc problem will be solved for my own use. However, for discs to go to other people (non-blu-ray) the DVD+R DL will still not be quite large enough for the longest videos at best quality, because....
It looks as if the formatting process shrinks the size of the total raw footage file size by about 60%. For example, for the test video the other day, the total footage folder size (four video clips + one JPG image) is 4.66 GB. The produced mp4 file that sits on my removeable drive is 4.15 GB. Yet, the movie that was burned to a single layer DVD yesterday at AVC-HD is only 1.78 GB .... about 39% of the size of the original raw-footage material before any editing, encoding, or burning.
My largest "need to produce" video footage file at the moment is 29.9 GB. Applying the same conversion rule (that the finished project on disc would be only 40% of that roughly 30GB) that's still a 12 GB video which is too big to fit on a DVD-R DL. I do have quite a few footage files that are in the low 20s GB and might squeak onto a DL DVD as AVCH but the largest videos (25GB-30GB before processing) will need a blu-ray disc or nothing if best quality video is what's wanted.
Detail is important because almost all of my videos are of arboretums, gardens, nature walks, etc. I bought the GoPro because I wanted those to be actual walk-through tours, and the GoPro's in-camera image stabilization options are pretty much the best you can get without having to use a gimbal. What I did not know is that the GoPro's zoom function is awful and the color profiles (only either UltraBlah or Burn-Your-Eyeballs Neon) are horrible for things like foliage and flower color. So I now have dozens of videos that were shot in Flat color profile and thus will need color corrections in PD20.
Pre-GoPro, I had been using either a Nikon J-1 or a Nikon D3300 for filming but of course ran up against any camera's overheats-after-20-minutes-of-filming issue. During the summer they would overheat in less than 15 minutes on a hot sunny day. Hence the recent purchase of the Canon Vixia which is heavy enough for me to need a tripod, but the color is great and no overheating worries. That said, I will still use the GoPro for anything filmed in the dead of winter rather than having to fuss with a tripod in snow or on ice.
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I spent several hours today testing various encoding and burning formats, and am now more frustrated than ever, LOL. Here's what I tried in Create Disc, and the results:
Using 2D DISC/BLU RAY, there is only one format available ("Movie format BDMV with menu"). Chose H.264 and 1920 x 1080/60p which is what the footage was recorded in, and was edited in. Result = Current blu-ray player produced only audio, no video.
Burned another blu-ray disc but chose MPEG-2 this time. The "best" available option that way is 1920 x 1080/60i (26 mbps). Result = Disc did play, but badly. Many areas constantly flickered, and entire areas of pixels formed and shifted out of sync every time the camera did any panning or shifting of any kind. Unwatchable.
Then tried 2D DISC/AVCHD, in H.264 and highest available setting which is 1920 x 1080/60i (17 mbps). Result = Surprisingly, this did play in my decade-old machine and in fact turned out to be the best quality of any of the tests that I did. All panning and walking motions were smooth, no flickering and no pixelation/shifting. I have to say though that in any fine-detail areas such as gravel paths, conifer foliage seen as the camera moved (walking, etc) produced a sort of glittering effect on all of the edges. Don't know what that is called, to be honest. I thought maybe this is a result of having to encode as interlaced rather than progessive, so next I tried"
The exact same procedure but instead using 1920 x 1080/24P (17 mbps) setting. Result: = Not good. All frames containing any motion or panning were jerky. No outnight breaking up into pixelation like in the MPEG-2/blu-ray disc but definitely jumpy. Not smooth at all. Really annoying, especially after seeing the silky smooth movement/pans in the AVC-HD test.
Next try was as 2D DISC/DVD. Only option there is MPEG-2, 720x480/60i (9.5 mbps). Result = The entire video had a slight 'strobe' effect, like a faint flashing ligher/darker. Major motion blur, basically everything looked slightly out of focus. Sound worse also, a bit. Murky.
I then used the Produce function to create a file to save to my removeable Samsung drive, to play on the computer: From Produce, went to STANDARD 2D, format H.264 AVC, MPEG-4 1920x1080/60p (40 Mbps). Then tried an experiment:
Instead of burning a standard DVD disc from within PD20, I did it from a small freeware program called DVD Flick. It doesn't have much customization, so I used Normal settings for everything. Used same machine (LG M-Disc Blu ray/dvd burner) that I'd burned all the other test discs on. Even though the settings are (I assume) the same as PD's DVD-burn specs, the resulting disc looked better. Not as good as the AVCHD DVDs, but definitely better than PD's output of the same 'product'. Seems odd because the content itself is the same in both of the software tests, right? The only difference being that PD burned from a .pds file and DVD Flick was starting with an .mp4 file.
So it looks like I am down to two choices for all this footage. Either buy a new, fancier blu-ray player (and it seems that only the 4K Sony ones specify that they will read AVCHD 2.0, but lots of complaints about them also); or burn everything as AVCHD on DVDs for myself, and downgrading to an MPEG-2 lower resolution DVD to send to people who want a copy. Of course I have a stack of blank blu-ray discs... :-/
The problem with using DVDs is, of course, available space. Even though AVC-HD obviously compresses the output, I don't think the longest videos are going to compress enough to fit onto a 4.7 GB DVD 
Is there any way to burn AVC-HD format video to a blu-ray disc (and keep it as AVC-HD format)? At least on a blu-ray disc I'd have enough space for the longest videos. I have read online that AVC-HD is "compatible" with blu-ray; does that mean there's a way to get them onto a blu-ray disc instead of onto a DVD? If so, how? (google results only point to using Roxio Toast but I have a PC, not a Mac)
Thanks for your patience!!
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Wow, lots of good info there and now I am re-thinking a few things as a result.
The total length of the videos waiting to be processed range from 15 minutes to 59 minutes. For example, the first three (from 2020) are 25, 15, and 33 mins as the sums of the individual clips, so it would be handy to put those finished videos on a single blu-ray. The next two chronologically are 50 mins and 39 mins, so those two on another..and so on. I suspect that most would end up with two videos per blu-ray which would be fine.
As for the blu-ray player itself, it's a Panasonic that is either a 2011 or 2012 model. In the specs under 'Playable Media' list, it shows (for BD-R) simply "Video, MKV". Obviously, it plays commercial blu-ray movies just fine.
For DVD-R the list shows "Video, AVCHD, MKV, JPEG, MPO, FLAC, MP3, WAV". For SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Card, the supported contents are AVCHD, AVCHD 3D, MP4, MPEG2,JPEG, MPO. And for USB devices up to 2TB, it will play MP4, MPEG, MKV, JPEG, MPO, FLAC, MP3 and WAV. (My portable hard drive is a 2TB Samsung SSD; the MP4 ability explains why I can watch the GoPro footage from either the camera's miniSD card or from the Samsung.)
I did discover that the MKV support on this machine is only for interlaced files, not progressive, though.
Sounds like AVCHD 2.0 is not supported on my player because that version probably emerged after 2011/2012. Although the machine is a decade old, it has worked fine and I don't see any need to replace it with something new, especially since I don't need/want streaming and the tv itself isn't 4K capable, so no point really.
I actually bought a new camera about a month ago (Canon Vixia G60) because the GoPro doesn't really suit me on several levels. Have only shot once with it so far, and did so at 60 fps but have decided that going forward I am going to shoot at 30 in order to give myself a greater range of encoding options. So those will be shot, edited, and produced at the same frame rate.
As for my two years of 60 fps GoPro footage, I will try dropping the 60 fps clips into a 30 timeline and production format and see what happens. If there's a bit of slo-mo as a result, it shouldn't be much out of sync with the realtime narration that was recorded. If it is, then worst case scenario would be that I'll have to dump all the original audio and overdub it in post-production. Would be a time-consuming nuisance but do-able.
Going to do a test of that first (15 minute) GoPro footage at 60 fps throughout, burn it to a blu-ray at 1080p/60 and see if it works in my player. If not, will run it through PD again but in a 30 fps timeline and see which blu-ray encoding option will play on it.
Thanks again!
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New PD20 user here, asking for "best practice" advice about GoPro footage.
I have about 2 years' worth of travel footage taken with a GoPro 9, recorded in 1920x1080 and 60 fps (well, 59.94 according to the files themselves), bitrate 45221. Codec for these settings is H.264+HEVC, and footage is saved as MP4. (I have not recorded anything in 4K)
Many of them will need color correction (not a fan of the GoPro color profiles, as I found out) and some videos will need a complete overdub (original audio track removed and replaced by an overdub that I will record in realtime during the editing process) because of lousy original audio.
My intention for the finished videos is twofold: (a) to ultimately burn them to Blu-Ray NTSC discs, for players (ideally, with at least two videos per disc, if they fit) in order to retain the best video quality; and also (b) to also archive each video on a portable external hard drive that can be plugged into any USB-A port and viewed that way also.
First question: I've read recently that GoPro footage isn't as amenable to editing as other codecs, and that it's better to convert the H.264 footage to something else at the outset. That said, the pages suggesting this were sites that happen to sell converter software, LOL. So that's my first question: In PD20, should I work with the GoPro footage as-is (native H.264)?
Second question: Assuming the editing all goes well, what encoding formats should I choose when I get to the Produce stage in PD?
If I choose MPEG-4 for burning to blu-ray, can the frame rate be 60 to match the video (and retain the 1920x1080)? If not, which blu-ray compatible format will do that?
I will also need to burn some to a DVD-R, because not everyone who will be getting a copy of the finished disc has a blu-ray player (and some don't even own a computer but they do have a dvd player connected to their tv). For those DVDs, I guess I will need to encode as MPEG-2 despite the resulting lower resolution. (for single-sided 4.7GB Verbatim DVD-R)
For the archived finished videos that I will store on a portable drive, what encoding format will also allow them to be viewed directly from that medium on any Windows computer?
Sorry for all the questions but considering that I am facing the prospect of having to create 18 different videos, all shot with the GoPro, I would love some suggestions as to the available Produce / Burn format choices that PD offers.
Thanks in advance!
p.s. - In case it's relevant: I have Windows 10 Pro on a Dell Optiplex 3050 desktop computer, Intel Core i5-7500T, 8192 MB RAM, Intel HD 630 graphics
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