Hey Walker, I've got a PS3 too...the original 60GB version. Now I know that there are at least two of us who bought it at the launch date. lol

Ok, to tell you the truth, I have never opened the door to the card reader on my PS3, that is, until I saw your question. I appreciate the PS3 a lot more now...way ahead of its time.

Anyway, I've got a AVCHD camera too; the Panasonic HDC-SD1. I shot some test footage to see if I could duplicate your quality issues with PD7 and I think I've got the answer.

First off, I assume your camera shoots in 16:9. If true, then all you have to do *before* you import your clips to PD7 is to set your aspect ratio for the program to 16:9 and not 4:3. If you burn your project in 4:3 ratio, when your footage is really 16:9, you'll end up trying to fill up the screen by adjusting the controls on your TV. That's when you get the artifacts and bad quality.

You have to change this aspect ratio to match whatever video you are pulling into PD7 before putting anything into your project. You do this by clicking on the the little director's chair in the upper left hand corner, select "edit," and then select "aspect ratio" to the proper setting.

When you play back your burned DVDs on the PS3, they'll look a lot better because the aspect ratios now match up with your footage. One more thing...if you hit triangle during playback of your DVD on the PS3, you can adjust the AV setting so that your machine will have a higher playback quality. Make all the settings "3" and the quality will improve even more on playback.

Soooo, have you played Resistance 2 yet? I'm still on the fence on that one. I thought the first one was really fun, and I'm not even into shooters. First one had a really great plot, imo.

I didn't get a launch PS3. I got an 80GB version when they came out and it does have the card reader slots, although I've never used them.

I'm a big flash thumb drive user. My biggest thing is downloading 720p MKV versions of TV shows and then converting them (mkv2vob) and throwing them on the flash stick. With the AVCHD clips (.MTS) files, I remove those from the camcorders card - copying them to my computer. Then I delete everything on the flash card and stick it back in the camera.

For watching those .MTS files on the PS3 I copy them to my flash thumb drive and stick it in the one of the front USB ports. One thing about the PS3 is that by default it will say it finds no media for most of the media types it will play. You have to select the flash thumb drive and hit the triangle button to show all files. At that point it will list all the .MTS files and play them perfectly.

I haven't tested a burned disk on the PS3 itself. I always use the standard DVD player in the living room to see what things will look like to the rest of the family. The one in the living room is an HDMI upscaling player but the upscaling quality of the PS3 on standard DVD's puts it to shame.

Yeah the HF100 only films in 16:9 and I did have the project(s) set to 16:9 before I imported the file.

I'm going to record some new footage tomorrow and play around a bit more.

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I almost never buy games for my PS3. It's more like my personal media device in the spare bedroom I've claimed as my "man-room" (where I play games and watch sci-fi shows away from the wife). I buy almost all games for my 360 except for PS3 exclusive, and I never get into the shooters like Resistance. The PS3 is by far a better media center. It's only flaw is that it does not play PAL DVD's like the 360 does.

Really for games I like the 360 controller better and I still love getting those points a lot. The last games I bought for the PS3 were Uncharted and MGS4

Transfering all your online shows to a thumb drive is nice. Tech is great, isn't it?

As far as the degradation of your mts files being burned over to a DVD, I played my test video on a regluar DVD player with upscaling and didn't see the quality go down as you mentioned. So if your settings on PD7 are ok, it must be either the burning software or the other equipment it's being played on.

Maybe you can start tweaking your DVD player/TV settings to see if that helps out any. Could be something as simple as a bad or loose cable, or interference with another device. When you mentioned you had blocky graphics, it sounded as though it had something to do with the playback on a machine.

Of course, if you're comparing the PS3 output with a plan jane DVD player, there's going to be some difference. I think the later PS3s had the more advanced codecs to make the unit shine. I'm not much into HT, but if I were, the PS3 would do it for me.

Anyway, when you figure out what's going on, let us know.

The last game I bought for the PS3 was GTA4. Don't really have much in games for it, but I had to get the PS3 because I was writing for the game industry at the time. If it wasn't for that, I probably would have never purchased it.

My "man room" used to be in the bedroom where I had all my game machines set up. But my wife made me take them all out and now my office is my "man room." Too bad, it was nice playing games from bed...you get tired, you're right there and go right to sleep. lol

Quote: When I use PD7 to burn a HQ DVD, the conversion/compression comes out really bad in all cases. I mean considering the much lower quality of an HQ DVD burn it looks a lot worse that in should. In low light shots there's even large 'block' areas that flutter around on the screen. It looks worse than SD on an LCD to me.

Walker, I agree with your observastions resulting in my workflow being .MTS to PC>edit with PD>render to BD 1920x1080 mpeg2>use different application to burn DVD.
I use the BD files over network to the media player/plasma and burn DVDs for friends using a third party application.
AVCHD rendering is woeful. Mpeg2 SD rendering is average. Mpeg2 HD rendering is pretty good. I have inquired about the issue but with little result.

Quote: I use the BD files over network to the media player/plasma and burn DVDs for friends using a third party application.

When you say burn DVDs for friends using a third party application, do you mean:

1. Standard definition DVDs, because of the bad quality when rendering in PD7? OR,
2. AVCHD DVDs, because of the worst quality ever when rendering in PD7?

BTW, my workflow now is:
MTS to PC>edit with PD>render to HD mpeg2 1080i>TSMuxer to Blu-ray folder>Nero to AVCHD DVD.

The result is good (better than anything PD7 does), but certainly a pain in the ass.

Please Cyberlink fix the HORRIBLE AVCHD handling in PD7