• The Mac-Forums Community Guidelines (linked at the top of every forum) are very clear, we respect US law and court precedence when it comes to legality of activity.

    Therefore to clarify:
    • You may not discuss breaking DVD or BluRay encryption, copying, or "ripping" commercial, copy-protected DVDs.
    • This includes DVDs or BluRays you own. Even if you own the DVD or BluRay, it is still technically illegal under the DMCA to break the encryption. While some may argue otherwise, until the law is rewritten or the US Supreme Court strikes it down, we will adhere to the current intent of the law.
    • You may discuss ripping or copying unprotected movies or homemade DVDs.
    • You may discuss ripping or copying tools in the context that they are used for legal purposes as outlined in this post.

Burn AVCHD content to DVD media for playback in BluRay player - without loss?

Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014
I have recently purchased a couple of 4K televisions and want to calibrate them. There is freely available pattern media to use, but it is developed in AVCHD format and needs to be burned to a DVD in order to be leveraged via BluRay player. I am looking for a complete method that will allow me to burn an ISO of the AVCHD content onto a standard DVD without any quality loss. In a nutshell, the authoring software needs to not only be able to burn the ISO image but it needs to correctly label the media so that the BluRay player recognizes it as BluRay Movie.

Does anyone know of a free software package that will do this correctly on a Mac? There are apparently some software packages that will work for Windows, but that isn't an option for me at this time.

Please note: This request is explicitly for burning content to disc and doesn't have anything to do with editing the content.
 
OP
E
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014
Thanks.

I don't see anything that discusses AVCHD at all, and it doesn't look like there's much info about burning HD content to standard DVD. The free version also says something about only burning standard discs. Did you see something in particular that seemed to imply it could do what I'm after?
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
2,511
Reaction score
134
Points
63
Location
Warrington, UK
Your Mac's Specs
PPC Mini, 10.4.11. Intel Mini, 10.6.8. MacBook Pro, 10.14.6. M1 MBA 11.6.3 iPhone 5 iOS 12.5,
Did you see something in particular that seemed to imply it could do what I'm after?

Numerous mentions of BluRay. Don't know if it's what you're after though. Just a suggestion.
Video DVD Authoring and Blu-ray Burners (Advanced Feature)
• Video files are re-encoded for standard movie discs
• Video burning supports avi, mpg, vob, wmv, mp4, ogm and all video formats with a DirectShow based codec
• Create and manage chapters on DVD and Blu-ray discs
• Template menu screens and buttons for DVD authoring
• Widescreen or standard formats for video burning
• Record video files to PAL or NTSC

Data CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Writing: Perfect for creating backup discs (Advanced Feature)
• Burn data discs as ISO/Joliet, UDF or Hybrid
• ISO burner will record ISO images to disc
• Create ISO files in addition to burning to disc
• Burn Blu-ray data and video discs
 

pigoo3

Well-known member
Staff member
Admin
Joined
May 20, 2008
Messages
44,210
Reaction score
1,418
Points
113
Location
U.S.
Your Mac's Specs
2017 15" MBP, 16gig ram, 1TB SSD, OS 10.15
Try using "Handbrake" (app). I'm not 100% sure of all the details of your project...thus try an internet search using the search term "convert avchd to dvd mac handbrake". You will get a bunch of hits...read thru them & see which one seems to best fit what you would like to do.:)

- Nick
 
OP
E
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014
Thanks for the ideas.

The directions provided by the folks that built the ISO image pretty clearly point you in the direction of using ImgBurn on a Windows machine because it supports burning the content to a standard DVD without altering the structure of the underlying data.

I may try and look at options to burn to a BluRay, but that's not likely to go well. :)
 
OP
E
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014
I'll give it a whirl.

The important thing is that it can burn an ISO with AVCHD formatted content to a standard DVD. ISO burning in and of itself is pretty simple and I can do that from any of my systems. It's that pesky AVCHD thing... :)

Thanks for the suggestion.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
2,511
Reaction score
134
Points
63
Location
Warrington, UK
Your Mac's Specs
PPC Mini, 10.4.11. Intel Mini, 10.6.8. MacBook Pro, 10.14.6. M1 MBA 11.6.3 iPhone 5 iOS 12.5,
The important thing is that it can burn an ISO with AVCHD formatted content to a standard DVD.
Just tried Burn with an AVCHD clip and it does accept it. Of course, as with all DVD software, it will convert that clip to an .mpg file for burning.
 
OP
E
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014
Hmmm. Not sure if that will work, then. MPG is not of the same quality as AVCHD and it MUST be at the same quality level.
 
Joined
May 21, 2012
Messages
10,703
Reaction score
1,158
Points
113
Location
Rhode Island
Your Mac's Specs
M1 Mac Studio, 11" iPad Pro 3rdGen, iPhone 13 ProMax, Watch S7, 2018 15" MBP, AirPods Pro
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
2,511
Reaction score
134
Points
63
Location
Warrington, UK
Your Mac's Specs
PPC Mini, 10.4.11. Intel Mini, 10.6.8. MacBook Pro, 10.14.6. M1 MBA 11.6.3 iPhone 5 iOS 12.5,
But, did you make it an ISO or DMG, before using burn?
No, the OP wanted a standard DVD.

Hmmm. Not sure if that will work, then. MPG is not of the same quality as AVCHD and it MUST be at the same quality level.
In that case, if you want a dvd that will play in a dvd machine, you'll need to make a BluRay disc. Standard DVD's require conversion to mpg.
 
Joined
May 21, 2012
Messages
10,703
Reaction score
1,158
Points
113
Location
Rhode Island
Your Mac's Specs
M1 Mac Studio, 11" iPad Pro 3rdGen, iPhone 13 ProMax, Watch S7, 2018 15" MBP, AirPods Pro
OP
E
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014
I don't think you're following the process here, so I'll try explaining it differently.

ISO, DVD, BluRay, AVCHD, MPG, MP4, MKV, M2TS... These are all -containers-. The are nothing more than ways to store various pieces of information together for, let's call it, future use.

Things like an MPG or MP4 have explicit limitations on certain aspects of the data they can contain. Max resolution of a video content is one of these things, and it's limited by the "best" codec that is supported within the MP4 container.

A AVCHD container is able to store much higher resolution video than an MPG. Things like a DVD -imply- limitations in other areas. The reason that a DVD limits video resolution to 480i is because anything higher would require more space than is available on the DVD format for any standard length movie. But, it's worth noting that a standard DVD -CAN- hold high quality video that is in a AVCHD container if the program that writes the material IGNORES the implied limitations of the media.

What I am trying to do is write an ISO (which is also a container, but does not imply the sort of limitations that something like native DVD does) that holds an AVCHD container of content to a standard DVD. I have zero interest in trying to PLAY this DVD in a standard DVD player, I am simply interested in using it as the storage medium for high quality content. Playback of this DVD will be in a BluRay player which has the software to properly decode and play AVCHD and BluRay containers of content. The only difference is that the delivery medium will be a standard DVD.

The quality of the content can NOT be modified in any way or it is useless. So, "importing" and "converting" are not options.

ImgBurn for Windows will do what I need. I do not have access to a Windows machine to do this.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
2,511
Reaction score
134
Points
63
Location
Warrington, UK
Your Mac's Specs
PPC Mini, 10.4.11. Intel Mini, 10.6.8. MacBook Pro, 10.14.6. M1 MBA 11.6.3 iPhone 5 iOS 12.5,
OP
E
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014
I know how to burn the ISO manually, but thanks.

The issue is that all of the command line tools and almost all GUI products won't let you write HD content to DVD as a medium - they either halt complaining about wrong medium type, or they auto-convert the content. Neither is acceptable.

I need something that ignores the medium type and "writes it anyway".
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
2,511
Reaction score
134
Points
63
Location
Warrington, UK
Your Mac's Specs
PPC Mini, 10.4.11. Intel Mini, 10.6.8. MacBook Pro, 10.14.6. M1 MBA 11.6.3 iPhone 5 iOS 12.5,
The issue is that all of the command line tools and almost all GUI products won't let you write HD content to DVD as a medium - they either halt complaining about wrong medium type, or they auto-convert the content.
Hmm...I think that's trying to tell you something.
 

Slydude

Well-known member
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Nov 15, 2009
Messages
17,596
Reaction score
1,072
Points
113
Location
North Louisiana, USA
Your Mac's Specs
M1 MacMini 16 GB - Ventura, iPhone 14 Pro Max, 2015 iMac 16 GB Monterey
Toast has a component that should write an appropriate file to a Blu Ray disc since it supports writing Blu Rays but it's not a cheap program.
 
OP
E
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
51
Points
48
Location
CT
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Air Mid-2012 / iMac Retina 5K Late-2014

Thanks, but that's a paid program. I'm interested in either doing this with what's built into the Mac or with a freely available piece of software - I literally have ONE disc to burn, and it isn't terribly important.

BTW.. Forums are shutting down (they're supposed to be closed already). Might want to read the thread about it: http://www.mac-forums.com/news-and-community-announcements/344599-mac-forums-shutting.html
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top