Your problem is that you are producing a DVD. DVD by its very nature is standard definition. There are upscaling DVD players which try to mimic HD when played on a 720p or 1080p LCD screen.

This is what I do when producing video to DVD from 1080i mts files. I normally render to the MPEG2 BD profile to save my final or intermediate steps. If I have to do any further editing of adding additional video, SVRT will kick in and not rerender the video in those areas (although the sound usually gets rerendered). When all is completed I then render to the DVD HQ setting.

In your case you may want to produce your final project using the MPEG2 BD profile. You should be able to write that to a blue ray disk directly. You also may be able to make AVCHD hybrid disks by rendering to AVCHD format and burning that onto a standard DVD. I think that will give you about 20 minutes of HD video. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

Hi Belinda

Just to add to James reply.

To make a hybrid AVCHD dics (which is playable on many BD players - especially those companies who developed AVCHD eg Sony, Panasonic):

1. Open disc Module
2. In "create disc preferences" (spanner icon bottom left) select AVCHD, then disc size. Also select video resolution ( I use 1920x1080).

I have fit almost 1 hr of HD video onto a DL DVD media (8.5Gb). They play well on PS3.

Regards

thanks for the replies (very helpful) - in your opinion which is the best option to go with in terms of maintaining maximum quality?

Quote: in your opinion

In my opinion, PD has been let down by the AVCHD rendering. Myself and others can notice obvious degradation from the original video quality when PD renders the AVCHD files. This is even with the same bitrate. So like James I convert to Mpeg2 BD profile. This is just good 'ol mpeg2 but at a rather "expensive" bitrate of 25Mbps. As I have oodles of HDD space and play files from a media player the large file size doesn't bother me but it is a shame you have to convert to another codec when we should be able to stick with the more efficient Mpeg4. SVRT also is not able to cope with the more recent AVCHD cameras so all footage is rendered.

So I edit with PD and
1. render to Mpeg2 BD profile for local playback as this consistently gives the best quality.
2. render to AVCHD and burn to DL DVD for hybrid disc for family/friends with Blu-Ray players
3. render to Mpeg2 BD profile and then use completely different software to produce SD DVDs for family/friends who don't have Blu-Ray players
and
4. keep all my original footage and projects in hope that PD8 fixes AVCHD rendering and can open PD7 project files (I am not holding my breath).

Hope this helps

thanks ... much appreciated.

To James & Pjc (& anyone else who may wish to reply)

Just wondering if your advise above has changed any with the new release of PD8 in terms of best quality of HD footage.?

Ta,
Belinda