Converting camcorder AVCHD to standalone Blu-ray disc?

[Riot Nrrrd™]

Hi,

(I was hoping maybe multiAVCHD could do this but it's not clear to me if it can.)

I have a Canon HF-11 camcorder that records in AVCHD.

The 16 GB SDHC cards are given "CANON" as the Volume name and laid out like so:

./PRIVATE:
AVCHD/

./PRIVATE/AVCHD:
AVCHDTN/ BDMV/ CANON/

./PRIVATE/AVCHD/AVCHDTN:
THUMB.TDT* THUMB.TID*

./PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV:
BACKUP/ INDEX.BDM* PLAYLIST/
CLIPINF/ MOVIEOBJ.BDM* STREAM/

./PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/BACKUP:

./PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/CLIPINF:
00000.CPI* 00003.CPI* 00006.CPI* 00009.CPI*
00001.CPI* 00004.CPI* 00007.CPI* 00010.CPI*
00002.CPI* 00005.CPI* 00008.CPI*

./PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/PLAYLIST:
00000.MPL* 00001.MPL* 00002.MPL*

./PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM:
00000.MTS* 00003.MTS* 00006.MTS* 00009.MTS*
00001.MTS* 00004.MTS* 00007.MTS* 00010.MTS*
00002.MTS* 00005.MTS* 00008.MTS*

./PRIVATE/AVCHD/CANON:
00000.MPL* 00002.MPL* INDEX.BDM*
00001.MPL* CINDEX.TMP* THUMB.TID*

I have Toast Titanium 10 Pro on a Mac and if I use the "AVCHD Archive" function, I can create an AVCHD format BD-R disc that will instantly play in my Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player, because it supports AVCHD discs. So I'm covered there for my own use.

But I'd like to be able to create/author "normal" Blu-ray BD-R discs that will play in normal (i.e. old) Blu-ray players that don't support AVCHD-formatted discs.

I'd like to be able to, for example, send a Blu-ray disc of my travel videos to family members, or a video of a concert I shot to a fellow music-loving friend, etc.

So far, I've only been able to figure out that apparently Roxio Creator on Windows definitely can do this, and probably others as well. (I have Windows 7 in Boot Camp, so if absolutely necessary I suppose I could go that route.)

Toast 10 has a "Blu-ray" tab that will accept video and write it out (with a main menu and chapter markers) but it worked "too fast" - and it looks like it creates Yet Another AVCHD Disc, albeit slightly improved with the aforementioned main menu.

In other words, I want my Oppo to recognize the final disc as a normal "BDMV" Blu-ray disc, not as an "AVCHD" disc.

Can multiAVCHD do what I want? Anything besides Roxio Creator that does it? If so, any particular recommendations?

(I'd LOVE to have a Mac program that does it, but I have this sinking feeling that there aren't any.)

[Ghitulescu]

MultiAVCHD should understand your footage. Just in case it doesn't, try first to join them (if needed) then remux them in tsremux/tsmuxer. In the case even this method doesn't work, author the AVCHD disk as you're used to and use the reauthoring function of multiAVCHD upon the AVCHD-disk to obtain a BD.

[Riot Nrrrd™]

Danke schön :)

Forgive me, but I'm a Mac guy so I'm not familiar with multiAVCHD and TsRemux/TsMuxer.

Why would I need to "join them" - do you mean creating one giant 00000.MTS file from the constituent files? And what kind of remuxing would be necessary?

Right now I "author the AVCHD disc" by basically telling Toast Titanium 10 Pro on a Mac to import the footage from the SDHC card (during which it seems to automagically convert the .MTS files into .m2ts) and I could tell it to create a disc image file instead of going directly to BD-R.

Then I could mount that Toast image and drag any files from it to multiAVCHD as required.

[Ghitulescu]

Why would I need to "join them" - do you mean creating one giant 00000.MTS file from the constituent files? And what kind of remuxing would be necessary?

Considering there's a limit of 4GB per file on an SD-card, the camcorder would split longer recordings, rejoining is needed.

[Riot Nrrrd™]

Update: Looks like I was wrong! I thought Toast had made another AVCHD disc, but when I watched the Oppo closely after it loaded the disc, it said "BD" not "AVCHD"! :eek:

So, maybe I won't need some fancy-pants Windows app after all. :D

One problem I am having, however - Toast treated all the .MTS files as separate "clips", so when I play the thing, after the first "clip" is over, it goes back to the main menu instead of going on to the next "clip" :(

[Riot Nrrrd™]

Considering there's a limit of 4GB per file on an SDHC card, the camcorder would split longer recordings, so rejoining is needed.

Ah, OK, that does make sense ...

But now it's kind of funny, check out my last post - I actually wouldn't mind it if it kept each file separate, and treated them as essentially ersatz "Chapter markers" of a sort.

Update: Looks like I overlooked a "Play all items continuously" check-box in Toast (d'oh!) when I made the first disc image file, so I'm going to try it all over again and create a new disc image with the changed settings.

[Ghitulescu]

AFAIK the splitting of recordings are byte-wise and not GOP-wise, that is, the recording must be binary joined, individual processing of the parts would drop the affected GOPs and the video would "skip".
I would use the software that came with the camcorder to do the joining (and/or the "capture"/import), then I would use the tools I mentioned and/or you used.

[Riot Nrrrd™]

AFAIK the splitting of recordings are byte-wise and not GOP-wise, that is, the recording must be binary joined, individual processing of the parts would drop the affected GOPs and the video would "skip".

Aha. Another good point. (I'm not sure my Canon came with any useful Mac software for muxing all these .MTS files into one big one. I'll try and have a look.)

Luckily I am burning these onto 25 GB 4x discs I stole from work so I can afford to burn a few coasters :D

Edit: One twist on this situation: 9 of the 10 files are 24 Mbps, 1920x1080. The very last file was shot at 12 Mbps, 1440x1080 because I was running out of time on the SDHC card.

Will that screw up any attempts to remux all of these 10 .MTS files together? Maybe I should keep the last one separate by itself ...

[ww927bin]

Aha. Another good point. (I'm not sure my Canon came with any useful Mac software for muxing all these .MTS files into one big one. I'll try and have a look.)

Luckily I am burning these onto 25 GB 4x discs I stole from work so I can afford to burn a few coasters :D

Edit: One twist on this situation: 9 of the 10 files are 24 Mbps, 1920x1080. The very last file was shot at 12 Mbps, 1440x1080 because I was running out of time on the SDHC card.

Will that screw up any attempts to remux all of these 10 .MTS files together? Maybe I should keep the last one separate by itself ...

Pavtube can join multiple files into a single file for conversion.You must conversion, or you cant export them.

[iamlindoro]

Pavtube can join multiple files into a single file for conversion.You must conversion, or you cant export them.

Please don't use pavtube. In fact, if you could send them an e-mail asking them why they're stealing other people's work and spread the word about their theft, that'd be great.

See:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1465932#post1465932