AVCHD --> BD-R (with menus)

[Paazabel]

I have terabytes of *.mts files shot with Canon Vixia in high definition. On my PC, these files play beautifully in HD with great detail. I have used a combination of Virtualdub, Sony Vegas, and Sony's DVD Architect to create great DVD's with this footage. They are, if I say so myself, pro-quality DVD's with crisp title menus, scene/chapter menus, and good navigation of the DVD.

I have searched ... and searched ... and tried several different methods of pushing this content to a BD-R while maintaining the quality of the original footage. Every tool I have found/used that can create a menu and chapter marks wants to re-encode the original video with varying degrees of quality loss.

I have used tsMuxer to maintain stream quality by creating a BD-R in AVCHD format and burning it with imgBurn. I love the quality, but there is no menu system. I can navigate by (tediously) entering the chapter marks. The resulting files are usually 12-20 GB in size, and although they burn to disc just fine, I'm not sure that they will work in every player. (They work on PS-3.)

Is there an authoring tool or set of tools I could use that would give me AVCHD "original quality" on disc AND navigation menus?

[Capsbackup]

Have you tried multiAVCHD? I think this would be perfect for what you want to do.

[Paazabel]

Yes, I tried that, but now I don't recall the issue I had with it. Audio sync? I'll give that another spin and follow up.

[Paazabel]

I remember now ... it's like a really hard platform game to navigate. Seems half the functions give some error that crashes the program. This last time, I got as far as adding an .MTS and joining two .MTS files to it ... but joining the third caused it to come crashing down, again. Perhaps I can mux elsewhere and use it for menus ... but it seems a very ... um ... spontaneous and unfriendly program.

[Ghitulescu]

You are probably one of the fewest that say multiavchd crashes or gives problems. I think your problem lies elsewhere, maybe in the files you have. Because multiavchd uses tsmuxer, so you probably don't have the needed avchd "libraries" (haali, h.264 codecs etc.).

[Paazabel]

No, it has to do with the muxing. I have had much better luck pre-muxing the files in tsmuxer and then feeding the big file to multiAVCHD. It has only crashed on me twice since doing it this way (compared to dozens of times before). Who knows. Obviously something weird going on there, but I simply cannot join the files together into a single title within multiAVCHD.

I have yet to succeed at making a playable BD-R, but I'm very close and not giving up. If I get it working with a couple of pieces of test video, I'll spend the time to make a template. It isn't everything I need, but it's better than just tsMuxer, which is where I was. MultiAVCHD definitely works better than I first gave it credit for, although I still have a lot to learn about it.

[Ghitulescu]

Where exactly did multiavchd crash?