I do have AVCHD files from my Canon HFS 100 that I need to put on Blu-Ray disks. I will try the different options you recommended above and see how it looks. I do have a BD burner and a BD player that plays AVCHD.
It is a shame that you can not keep the original quality video without compressing it further, especially since we now have media that holds much more data. I did burn one AVI video on to a DVD and I found the quaity to be not so good. The only way to reduce the file to that size is through compression and compression does degrade the picture - of course some compression algorithms being better than others. Jim, I respect what you say about the size of the file being meaningless, but there has to be some degradation of a video that goes from 20+ GB down to 4 GB to fit on a DVD. In any case, I wouldn't try up-converting to 1080. I don't have a Bluray player so quality may vary if played back on a different device. I found the results to be acceptable, but I was playing the folder back on my computer.
I created a Bluray in 720p MPEG which has less compression than AVC. I have tested this out using my older D8 TRV-740 files and my newer Canon HV20 in DV mode. This can result in poorer quality as Jim pointed out. To create a Bluray, the video would have to be 'stretched' to the larger size. Standard definition video is 720x480 (NTSC). Even the DV AVI from the Digital 8mm has 'some' compression, but not like other formats. Is there anyway to create a project on disc without any compression and keep the original video quality in tact? The old video's aren't the best quality to begin with (recorded on an old SONY Digital 8 Camcorder). I assume this is the best I can get, even though the output is still almost 10 GB less than the original file? The settings I used are Video Format: AVC, and Audio Format: LPCM.
Is there a lot of compression occuring even in a blu-ray project? What type of file format is created in a blu-ray project? I noticed that even if I change the blu-ray projects settings to highest quality, the file output size is almost 10 GB less than the original. In order not to lose quality, does it make sense to create blu-ray projects instead of DVD projects? Will the created blu-rays look much better than DVD. The AVI files that are captured are quite large: 20 - 25 GB depending on length of AVI file. I am in the process capturing my movies on tape and burning them to disc.