AVCHD DVD vs Bluray

To keep the quality, you will need to distribute blu-rays. But how many of your family have blu-ray players? And do you really want to make both dvds and blu-rays? What a PITA. Personally, I upload everything I want to share to youtube at full resolution as a private video, and then send the link to my family and friends. That way they can watch it at whatever resolution they prefer.

I agree with most of your answer here, but have to disagree concerning an AVCHD DVD vs. Blueray. On my 42" plasma, they both look wonderful, to the point that I cannot readily tell the difference, in both picture quality and sound quality. As for youtube, don't they down rez the picture quality?

The highest quality is tricky. The gold standard for quality in the AVCHD world is 1080p60. Assuming you want to keep that, I don't think burning Blu-Rays works. Wikipedia Blu-ray article says, "High-definition video may be stored on BD-ROMs with up to 1920×1080 pixel resolution at up to 59.94 fields per second, if interlaced. Alternatively, progressive scan can go up to 1920×1080 pixel resolution at 24 frames per second, or up to 59.94 frames per second at a resolution of 1280×720 pixels. So, although the view may not be able to tell or care, I think burning Blu-Rays drops the quality from "progressive" to "interlaced". My personal experience with my brand new Blu-ray burner confirms that.

I not sure about AVCHD disks. I would have to make one from a 1080p file and look at the result.

Assuming Vegas Pro will output 1080p60 final files, you can copy them to a DVD as a data file and some, but not all, Blu-Ray players will play them.

I am working on a family documentary that will be sent to about a dozen family members. Since I don't care or want to know anything about their equipment, I will be sending two disks. I found plastic "jewel cases" that will hold a pair of disks. One will be a Blu-Ray and one will be a SD DVD. Each will be clearly labeled as to what kind of play back machine is required. Nobody will get 1080p files.

It may be that the only sure way to distribute 1080p60 is to put it on thumb drives for those that have Blu-Ray players or TVs with USB ports.

With every NLE, and their annual version release, the options change. It may be that Vegas Pro does make "better" Blu-ray disks than other software. The only way you will know is to do some tests with a small project and see for yourself.

Blu-ray officially allows up to 40 Mbit/s. Blu-ray does not officially allow 1080p60.

AVCHD Discs officially allow up to 18 Mbit/s. AVCHD Discs came about during AVCHD 1.0 time and have not been updated for 2.0, so question of 1080p60 is moot. High-bitrate videos from DVD media may or may not display well depending on media quality and BD player drive capabilities.

In either case, you are out of compliance, but at least BD media can handle the bitrate with ease.

If you want to stay compliant then re-encode into 720p60 and author onto BD.

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This is one of the reasons I use 1080p24.

1.1) It is BD-legal.
1.2) It is BD-legal in Europe! Every BD player made for 50 Hz system must support 24p, this is how they distribute movies on BD. Movies on DVD are sped up to 25p.
2) It is AVCHD Disc legal @ 17 Mbit/s.
3) It looks good when authored to regular DVD-Video.
4) It looks good on YouTube: less macroblocking, no combing, no ghosting.

Sure, 1080p60 is the future. But presently:

1) 1080p60 is not BD legal
2) 1080p60 is not AVCHD Disc legal
3) There is no 60p on DVD-Video, so you need to downscale and interlace; interlaced standard def looks like crap on a big screen.
4) YouTube drops frame rate (at least it tries to keep up in fast scenes), Vimeo halves frame rate to 30fps.

So, 1080p60 is awesome if you make it for yourself and you have proper equipment to watch it. For distribution - not so good.
Edited by Ungermann - 2/7/13 at 3:33pm

I would avoid AVCHD DVD for distribution – it might work for you at home if you find that your player will play them and you can save a few bucks on discs, but I wouldn’t count on anyone else being able to play them. I’d say stick to the book standards for distribution. Encode mpeg 2 for DVD for those who don’t have Bluray and stick to the specs for Bluray for it.

I went through this recently and found that my ‘project’ turned to trash when I let Adobe Encore transcode my files into DVD compliant discs. I decided to encode them separately from the source with 2 pass variable bitrate at the highest allowable bitrate, etc. for the best results for that format then created separate disc projects in Encore.