I've just converted an MKV file to AVCHD via TSMuxer but when the movie is played on the PS3 the resolution automatically changes to 480p and there is a large, thick green horizontal bar taking up a 3rd of the screen at the bottom. I did convert the audio from DTS to AC3 and lower the bitrate of the audio however, but that couldn't be the problem surely??? Any advice is much appreciated.
The resolution of your mkv is not Blu-Ray compliant. If you are just using AC3 mux to m2ts, not Blu-Ray. In order to be Blu-Ray compliant the dimensions of the video file must be 1920x1080 (not 1920x818, etc) or 1280x720 (not 1280x544, etc) otherwise you will get that hideous green bar. If there was no .nfo details file with your mkv download you can check the stats of any media with a program called MediaInfoRaw.
Im sorry ive spent hours trying to figure this out. I dont understand why i cant find a direct link to a simple tutorial on how to do this. i keep getting sent on these wild goose hunts where i have to figure this all out myself and read thru hours of stuff that doesnt directly adress this issue.
Best way to do it is to use Ripbot264 and set up the resolution without having to do any complicated calculations as stated in one of the tutorials on this site. I know you're going to hate having to re-encode your bluray movie but go into the properties within ripbot and make sure it's in "1280x720 HD READY" mode like this Crop and Resize Click on Properties to crop and resize video. Many movies are in 2.35 or 2.40 aspect ratio(check the back on Blu-ray cover) with black borders in the source Blu-ray video so we can crop out those. Under Crop choose automatically. Use the size if you want to down resize to smaller format like 1280x720(16:9) or choose Custom for 1280x544(2.35:1) or 1280x534(2.40:1). Click on the Preview to view how it will look like. If you're using a PS3 for your Bluray player you have to select the 4.1 profile or it won't work (or so I've been told, I use a BDP-BX1 so I just use profile 5.1). Here's a link to ripbot264: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/RipBot264 And more in depth information for encoding for PS3 I usually pick a 2-pass mode, and down on the right corner it says something like "fixed size", I select that and choose the 8,000~ or so one for DVD-9 (DL disks), those work best for 1080p movies, you can probably use dvd-5 for 720p movies.
