For the past 15 years I've used Pinnacle Studio, up to and including v15. Since the Avid takeover, the product changed enough to give me the push I needed to try PowerDirector.
As I do not have a BD burner, I've produced AVCHD onto standard DVD+R for the past few years. With Pinnacle, 35m was the upper limit on a single layer. Cyberlink appears to use a higher bit rate resulting in 25m tops. Consequently I used a DL disc for my project.

1. Disc not at all happy on my Panny BD35 - stutters occasionally and then becomes highly pixellated and distorted.
2. Plays well on my Sony BDP-S5100
3. I conclude the bitrate os causing the hassles on the Panny. Seems to run consistently at 22000-24500Kbps, which the newer Sony seems to tolerate. I'm also not convinced that the Verbatim +R DL 2.4x disc is that great a medium.

Now for my questions:

a) Can a custom AVCHD profile be created that will render at a lower bitrate, say 16000, and subsequently allow longer time on single layer DVD?
b) Are my concerns about the DL media real?
c) Should I be biting the bullet and purchasing a BD burner

Thanks, Duckysan

i7 4790, 16Gb, Gigabyte Z97, GTX460, 500Gb Seagate SSD, WD 2Tb Black, Win 7 Pro x64