Export to AVCHD DVD

As far as I know, no movie editing software offers AVCHD as an output format. You have 2 options to create DVDs.

1. If your BR player will play AVCHD-encoded files, you can just copy them from the camcorder and burn them to DVD without editing.

2. If you need/want to edit them first, you can output from any decent editor to DVDs that will play in tour (or any other) DVD player, although they won't any longer be formatted as AVCHD.

I'm not sure why it's important to keep them as AVCHD.

OK - now I get it.

If you export to Quicktime from iMovie, you get choices of quality, including all the main HD formats.

To create BR discs, try Toast Titanium. I know i means spending money (ouch!), but it'll enable you to create BR discs.
Also, have a look at MPEG-Streamclip, free utility to convert video formats. Very useful and will allow you to spend hours and hours fiddling around (well, that's what I did)

http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

Toast Titanium will burn BluRay to standard DVD disks on a standard DVD burner. These files are actually AVCHD files that most BluRay players can read.

I am in the process of trying to burn an AVCHD disc from an iMovie project using Toast Titanium 10 pro. IMovie evidently seems to export only 720p instead of the full 1080p that AVCHD is capable of and I am disappointed by that. I was able to export it to the Media Browser and Toast saw it. When I started recording it goes through an "encoding" process that is taking many, many hours to complete. My project is 50 minutes long. I will not be able to see the result until it finishes, but I will get back and report after it finishes and then I will attempt to play it in my Blu-ray player.

Have you tried an Export to Quicktime, then setting the resolution/size of the video? That might resolve the 720/1080 issue.

There's no problem in exporting 1080i to Toast and burning a 1080i movie to regular DVDs using your Mac's SuperDrive. You must export to QT.

With the advent of the 8.0.1 update there are certain editing restrictions you need to follow.

Ok. I figured that out. But I burned a 720p DVD anyway, and when I went to play it in my Blu-Ray player, nothing happened. It said there was an AVCHD DVD, showed a green "play" arrow and then - nothing happened. My movie is 52 minutes long and initially Toast said it wouldn't fit on a DVD in "Best" mode but I tried anyway. Maybe that was the problem, but I really didn't want to dumb down the video to "Better" mode. Is there a way to burn a project on to multiple discs in Toast 10 Titanium Pro? I used to be able to do that on my PC using Sony's Picture Motion Browser, which told me how much room was left on the disc as I added scenes. The problem is Picture Motion Browser doesn't really edit. I am now in the process of trying to burn the Quicktime 1080i version to disc using Toast. The encoding takes hours and hours....

What restrictions do I need to follow editing in 8.0.1? Thanks for your help.

Toast can burn a maximum of about 15 minutes of 1920x1080 AVCHD to a standard DVD. For longer movies you will need a BluRay burner.

I use an old PC portable and mkv2vob - a freeware PC program to do this. It does not need to transcode anything if the source file is the right format. It creates the proper file structure and you can burn an AVCHD DVD with freeware ImgBurn. The DVD has to be in UDF 2.50 format. In this arena at least the PC can do something easier than the MAC.

A Double-Layer would double that time.

And, you don't need to choose GOOD -- you can adjust the bit-rate lower to increase the time to 20-minutes, or even longer.