I'm using Pinnacle Ultimate 11.2.. i have a Panny DMC-tz5 camera which records in mov format the 720p (25mbit/sec) 8khz mono, 30P, files...

Pinnacle Ultimate bombs often, when i try to import the mov files, complaining about not supporting PAL (which doesnt make much sense to me)...

**What format would i be best off converting these to, so i can import in Pinnacle? I was guessing straight AVI.. but i have tried some converters like Super and TVC, only to find that the AVI file was badly compressed or reduced resolution.. i want the same quality in the output file.. Perhaps i should find a mov to mts converter instead?

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks

I also tried Vegas 8.0b v217... it worked fine on import, but when i went to Tools.. Burn to Blu-Ray.. the video template pull downs were blank, so i couldnt proceed.

If this is an AVC codec then try Yamb to demux the file and then tsMuxer to turn it into a BluRay compatible file which is basically an MPEG-2 transport stream wrapper. This way you don't have to recode the file. The workflow is in some of the other threads here or over in the BluRay software section. Just do a search.

I gave up on converting.. i found that sony vegas 8.0a did the trick except there is not the ability to have menus:



But Pinnacle 12 is working fine with my (all of them, not just a few here and there like with v11) mov files from my panasonic dmc-tz5 camera..

When you try to hit play you get that exclamation like before.. but if you drag the slider you can work with the video a bit. Down side is that for mov's at least, you have to go through and add them one by one.. no drag and drop a bunch like with sony vegas 8.0a;

I'd prefer to stick with pinnacle 12 since i can use menu's and sony's you cant as of yet.

**I wasnt sure which to pick for burning.. there is now the choice of blu ray disc type.. they give you the 25gb and 50 options.. for image type under blu ray disc there is BDMV (mpeg2) and AVC.. obviously if i had a blu ray recorder i would use this option, but would i pick AVC (at least with sony vegas and avchd and the mpeg2 option it was terrible looking)?

For now i would choose AVCHD which allows 64 minutes of video on one 8.5GB disc.. its choices for image type are AVCHD and BDMV (AVC).. again.. here would i choose the AVC?

BTW according to Pinnacle.. choosing the 25GB bD option allows for 125 minutes (about 2 hours) of video while the 50GB allows for 249 minutes (about 4 hours).

In either disc type case.. i'm guessing at least for my panasonic camera i would want to check off "Use progressive encoding" since the original mov file is 720P (30 progressive) (?)

Its also interesting to note that my panasonic data rate is 24mbps.. so in going with AVCHD, it is actually reducing it to 17mbps.