I searched and read....but don't find a good answer yet. :(
I just got the Canon HG20, I use Nero to burn those m2ts video files to regular 4.7GB DVD, but it won't play back on my OPPO dvd player.
****What I am missing here?
If I am not using Nero, but use the software comes with the HG20 to burn, then it won't burn and have message "incorrect DVD format" .

Please help.....I have to admit, I am not smart on these technologies.
Thanks.

If I am not using Nero, but use the software comes with the HG20 to burn, then it won't burn and have message "incorrect DVD format" .



The included Pixela Imagemixer software with the HG20 requires DVD-R, DVD-RW or DVD-R DL media. That may be the reason for the "incorrect DVD format" message.

Thanks LGS269, I have the dvd-rw, I will try to use the DVD-RW next time.

You need to have the whole AVCHD file structure with all of the sub directories that are created in the camcorder for burning to the DVD, not just the m2ts file. When you are ready to burn with Nero, you have to select DVD-ROM (UDF). Then you have to go to the UDF tab and change the setting from Automatic to Manual. Select 250 for PC (260 for Mac). Then you should have a DVD that will play in a Blu-Ray or PS3 player.

I searched and read....but don't find a good answer yet. :(
I just got the Canon HG20, I use Nero to burn those m2ts video files to regular 4.7GB DVD, but it won't play back on my OPPO dvd player.
****What I am missing here?
If I am not using Nero, but use the software comes with the HG20 to burn, then it won't burn and have message "incorrect DVD format" .

Please help.....I have to admit, I am not smart on these technologies.
Thanks.

The HG20 has a possible 1,920 x 1,080 and 24Mbits/sec @ highest resolution (why would you record lower?).

DVDs on a DVD player can only play 720x480 30fps 16Mb/s max (US) or 720x576 x 25fps 16Mb/s max (Europe Japan, Australia), so any higher resolution files you have you will have to down-convert first before you author a DVD playable on your DVD player.

Down converting takes a long time, will greatly reduce your video quality and (IMHO) defeats the purpose of buying a HD Cam in the first place !!

My recommendation is that you burn a Blu-ray player friendly AVCHD disc on an ordinary DVDR (16Mb/s max) or BDR. I have made plenty of these.
Of course, such a AVCHD disc will only play on a Bluray player or a PC, ie and not on a DVD player.

I use TSMUXER (free) to creaste the disc file structure and IMGBURN (free) to burn the discs - works perfectly (make sure you set to UDF2.5 format).

Thanks for the suggestions.
1/ I bought the non HD camcorder just right before this HG20, I burned to DVD and the video are so horrible on my 50" LCD. It is so blurry and i had to return the camcorder.
2/ People suggest that use the HD camcorder....so that is why I bought this HG20 HD. Man, I did not know that I have to purchase a BlueRay burner and player....that is too expensive.
3/ I had the Sony Video 8 before (just died) and video image are far better than the recent non HD camcorder and much easier to burn and play around than the new HD camcorder.....
4/ The gentlemen above suggested to use DVD-R, I did try it and it does not work. After I burned successfully completed, then put into the DVD player, it says "No Disk".

5/ I am not high tech or leading edge on this thing yet and too cheap to buy a blueray burner/player.....HOW CAN I DOWN CONVERT THE VIDEO SO THAT I CAN BURN TO REGULAR DVD AND ABLE TO PLAY ON REGULAR/TRADITIONAL DVD PLAYER?
For now, if I can burn and play on regular dvd player, I am happy with it. for the blueray, I will buy later when price drop a bit more.

Please help on how to convert the files to be able to burn to regular dvd burner/player....
thanks so much guys.

4/ The gentlemen above suggested to use DVD-R, I did try it and it does not work. After I burned successfully completed, then put into the DVD player, it says "No Disk".

5/ I am not high tech or leading edge on this thing yet and too cheap to buy a blueray burner/player.....HOW CAN I DOWN CONVERT THE VIDEO SO THAT I CAN BURN TO REGULAR DVD AND ABLE TO PLAY ON REGULAR/TRADITIONAL DVD PLAYER?
For now, if I can burn and play on regular dvd player, I am happy with it. for the blueray, I will buy later when price drop a bit more.


In #4 what steps did you take to burn the DVD-R? Did you use the included Pixela Imagemixer application to burn the DVD? Also, what are the specs of your PC? Once you complete the burn of the DVD, you should be able to verify playback using Windows Media Player or something similar on the PC.

Using the Pixela Image Mixer software, do you make an "AVHCD list" out of your .m2ts video clips, or a "DVD list" ?

You can "write" the AVCHD list to DVD-R, DVD-RW or DVD-R DL. If you then play this AVCHD disc on a PS3 or a standalone Sony or Panasonic Blu-ray player you will have high definition playback.
You do not need a Blu-ray burner to do this. A regular DVD computer burner will do the job just fine.

If you create a "DVD list", double click on it in the library list in the left hand scroll window. It will prompt you for disk size and recording quality. "High quality" is CBR of 9000 kbps. "Standard quality" is CBR of 6000 kbps. Some cheaper standalone DVD players might have a hard time playing 9000 kbps. I couldn't notice any difference anyway.

You will know if you are on the right track......

For every minute of your .m2ts clips it will take Pixela about 2 minutes to downconvert and write in standard DVD format to your DVD-R or whatever disc.

You will not get much more than 90 minutes on a standard DVD-R at 6000 kbps constant bit rate writing. This will take hours, even on a high-end computer.

I have a Canon HG10 that produces excellent AVCHD video.

To get the video onto a DVD in the highest quality possible, you need a software program capable to doing that. I use Cyberlink PowerDirector 7. There are others. Power Director 7 takes the AVCHD files without me having to convert them to some other format first. I put a DVD in the drive and I set the program to render the video in the highest quality it is capable of. It then creates all of the files needed and burns the files on the DVD and I can play it in my Sony Blu-Ray DVD player and watch them on my 50 inch plasma TV. If you don't have a Blu-Ray player, you will need to create a DVD in standard definition. The program can do that too and it looks pretty darn good even if it isn't HD. Newer DVD players can do some "upconverting" of conventional DVDs to improve their quality, almost HD.

One other thing, some DVD players (Samsung for one) may not accept DVD-R disks no matter what is on them and how it was burned. I believe all DVD players will work with DVD+R though.

One more thing, keep the original files. Some day you may have a HD TV and a Blu-ray player. If you keep the original files, you can redo the disk at a higher quality some day.

Update....
What I did wrong was copy all the m2ts files to my computer, then burn those files to DVD-R...which does not work.
I tried again by connect the camcorder to computer, then open the Pixela Image Mixer software, then select to make a "DVD". I then put in the blank DVD-R to drive, then select the files to fit 4.7Gig target, then click "Write".... The program will automatically convert the files and burn.
One disk takes a few hours to burn....I am not sure how long, but seems like 3 hours.

Thanks all for your help and your patients. :)
btw, the video quality pretty good too. I am playing on the upconvert OPPO dvd player.

Hi, I am not sure if people are still watching this thread, but if you do , I am in need of some help here. I did exactly what @BattleField has said in this post. But after a couple of hours, I found the DVD has not been written with anything??!!&$%% It was still blank!!
Before selecting the files to be written, there was an option to choose the AVCDH format or the DVD format, I guess I chose AVCHD format.. Should I be choosing DVD File?? I chose to write on a 4.7GB Verbatim DVD-R disc.. @Battlefield, can you help me out in this??

I'm currently in the process of going from AVCHD to SD DVD.

You have two paths you can take. Something like Nero or Ulead, which do all the conversions for you or several other programs, each with its own task. I'm going with the latter and it is a PITA, in my opinion.

I've been using computers since 1986 and nothing has changed much with software development. Most of it is not intuitive. That especially applies to the programs I seem to use.

I have not tried Ulead or Nero and cannot vouch as to what the results look like. I used Ulead years ago and liked it for AVI to DVD conversions.

I'm going to say that a one-size-fits-all approach will typically be a little less in the quality area as opposed to using programs that have a specialty, like TMPGEnc.

You also have to factor in whether you want to deal with the frustration of using several programs to get from ASVCHD to SD DVD. I am not quite crazy yet, but getting there.

For sure, download the trial versions and see what the results are. I'm going from camera, to Edius Neo Booster, to TMPGEnc, to DVD-labs. All works well but the final step, DVD-labs.

Not sure what I am doing wrong but I get no audio on the final disk. The video, however, looks outstanding.

All of this was recommended from folks over at dvinfo.net, as well as this site.

I have to also state that I have a state-of-the-art computer and my transcoding times are very fast, about 30 minutes for 10 minutes of 60p video. That is in two steps, so 60 minutes total.

I have heard good things about the latest versions of Ulead and Nero.

Now on the flip side, if you have a Blu Ray player that can play AVCHD, then all you have to do is copy the file straight to a disk. With SD, size is the limitation.

Also, if this is just for your personal enjoyment, you can get a media player like WD Live TV, and place your AVCHD file on a thumb drive and play it from the media player.

Good luck!

Alan

Alan,

After you re-encode in TMPGEnc, have you tried bringing it back into Neo as another sequence and then burn it to disc?

Hans

No I haven't.

Early in this process I went from a 60p to 1080i file to DVD and I thought it looked soft.

No artifacts, just not sharp.

Are their any particular settings I should look at changing?

As a footnote, just installed a trial of Corel Video Studio and when I double click on the desktop icon -- wala, nothing happens. It is now uninstalled.

Alan

No I haven't.

Early in this process I went from a 60p to 1080i file to DVD and I thought it looked soft.

No artifacts, just not sharp.

Are their any particular settings I should look at changing?

As a footnote, just installed a trial of Corel Video Studio and when I double click on the desktop icon -- wala, nothing happens. It is now uninstalled.

Alan

Alan,

After re-encoding in TMPGEnc, have you played the file to insure you have sound?

If you have sound then for some reason DVD Lab doesn't recognize it. Is your decision to use DVD Lab simply to Author the program or burn the dvd? I'm not familiar with that program so I can't be of any help. When you re-encode it in TMPGEnc what file type is it? I looked at your post on the DVInfo forum and read about the process the one gentleman had you try. I'm assuming you started with 1080P video in Neo, what did you output it to before you brought it into TMPGEnc?

What I can do is re-create your steps and see what happens as you know I have both Neo and TMPGEnc.

Hans

Hans.

I took a 60p file, imported into a 1920 1080i template in Edius, exported to Canopus HQ fine, loaded into TMPGEnc, then exported out and ended up with a .mp2 and .m2v file.

I loaded each of these into DVD-lab and the program indicated that the mp2 file was the wrong format so I let the program convert to a mpa file.

I did manage to burn one disk and when loaded on my computer, I only got audio and no video. Subsequent attempts to burn failed.

When I played on a DVD player, I got only video and no audio.

Every time I had the program "build" the files for the DVD, I never saw any files in the AUDIO folder. Should there be files there? I assume yes.

Thanks for trying to replicate this.

Alan

It always tickles me to see people spend $1000+ on a camcorder and then skimp on software and use freeware and shareware (appropriate for many things) and screw their workflow and workLOAD all to hell.

There are 10's of products out there for <$150 that will do what this guy wants to do basically point and click.

As noted already, the software that came with his camera should do it anyway (and does).

The things people do to complicate things never ceases to amaze me. I've been in the PC arena professionally since its inception and while I like tinkering with software too, many people don't. They just want to do what they want to do. When it comes to tasks like this, I'm exactly the same way. All you have to do in this case is spend about $100 and about an hour's learning curve. Pick an off-the-shelf package and be done with it.

All these tangents and all the guy needs to do is use Pixela and figure out:

1) Use the correct media or
2) Figure out why his DVD burner is not being correctly detected/seen correctly by Pixela (likely something else that's been installed that's screwed with the driver)

If this stuff didn't work "out of the box" people, Joe-Consumer would stop buying cameras and the industry would cease to exist.

Hans.

I took a 60p file, imported into a 1920 1080i template in Edius, exported to Canopus HQ fine, loaded into TMPGEnc, then exported out and ended up with a .mp2 and .m2v file.

I loaded each of these into DVD-lab and the program indicated that the mp2 file was the wrong format so I let the program convert to a mpa file.

I did manage to burn one disk and when loaded on my computer, I only got audio and no video. Subsequent attempts to burn failed.

When I played on a DVD player, I got only video and no audio.

Every time I had the program "build" the files for the DVD, I never saw any files in the AUDIO folder. Should there be files there? I assume yes.

Thanks for trying to replicate this.

Alan

Alan,

I'll play with it tonite and get back to you. I'm not sure why you got 2 separate files from TMPGEnc.

Hans:

I re-did all mine from scratch and I ended up with one TMPGEnc file that imported into DVD-lab and exported out to a finished DVD.

Not sure why the previous two failed.

I went with all default settings.

Alan

Hans:

I re-did all mine from scratch and I ended up with one TMPGEnc file that imported into DVD-lab and exported out to a finished DVD.

Not sure why the previous two failed.

I went with all default settings.

Alan

Aahh! Success at last. How was the picture quality on the DVD?

Picture quality was good.

I'm do for new glasses so it may turn out that the picture quality is great!

Alan