MKV to AVCHD in TS Muxer?

It depends on the MKV.  Most are encoded with the borders cropped and many are encoded with too many reference frames.  As a result, if you make an AVCHD straight from most MKVs, it won't play in your blu-ray player or PS3.

To make a viable AVCHD you need:

1. a resolution of 1920x1080 or 1280x720;
2. four reference frames or fewer for 1080p;
3. six reference frames or fewer for 720p;
4. AC-3 or lpcm audio - though DTS seems to work with my player;
5. to use profile 4.1 - though 5.1 now seems to work on the PS3. 

Most of the time, you will need to transcode.  This can be done with multiAVCHD or uncropMKV, both by a developer called Dean.  The former has many options, but the latter is simple, so I tend to use that.

I recommend one-pass turbo as the setting, as the slower/multi-pass settings take many days and you can't usually tell the difference.  I also recommend that you don't exceed four B-frames or the encoding will be very slow: I use three.

I hope this helps!

Hey Harmy, does this mean you're going to try and do an AVCHD on your project after all?  I don't think I can play a MKV to my tv, so I'd love an AVCHD.

The quality loss with x264 would be minor.  TV's Frink, if there does turn out to be no AVCHD version of Harmy's ESB, I would be glad to walk you through the AVCHD creation process any time; just PM me.

Oops, somehow missed this post.  Thanks as usual, Chew. :-)

adywan said:

yes, MultiAVCHD is a brilliant free program. If you are worried about quality loss due to transcoding then i would suggest using 2 pass VHQ as the transcode settings. It does take a long time but the results are a lot better than 1 pass turbo. It takes me about 12 hours to do a 2 hour movie using this setting

Consider that fast!  My computer takes several whole days to use 2 pass VHQ.  The quality is better, but not actually by very much.  Dean, who developed the program, recommends and uses 1 pass turbo.

Harmy said:

OK, I'm trying to make an AVCHD with a motion menu in MultiAVCHD and it just doesn't seem to work (POWER DVD 10 won't load it). I tried the "relaxed AVCHD" option and a "any Blu-Ray player" option and then created an ISO with ImgBurn. Media Player Classic HC loads it but it only plays the film and not the menu. Could anyone help me with that? Is it gonna work on Blu-Ray players?

I assume you are using multiAVCHD 3 as Adywan suggested.  I have never made an AVCHD with a motion menu and do not use any of those programs, so I cannot really help, other than to suggest you try the strict AVCHD profile.  The only way to know is to burn and see; if not on your player, then on someone else's.  Blu-ray players being fussy with AVCHDs is unfortunately rather common.

Harmy said:Also with 1pass FAST option the film took me over twelve hrs to encode I can only imagine that the 2pass VHQ would take ages.

Now you understand why I recommended 1-pass turbo.  :-)   2-pass VHQ took me at least four days i.e. 96 hours.  As I said before, the developer of multiAVCHD himself uses 1-pass turbo.  If you must perform a second pass, use 2 -pass fast, but it is a waste of time in my opinion.  You might also try Ripbot, but I think multiAVCHD 3 yields greater compatibility.