[pawel]

I tested today TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 with the following clips (5 minutes each):
* AVCHD (.m2ts) from Sony HDR-SR7E camera
* H264 1920x1080 25fps / AC3 2.0 448 kbps DVB-S satellite stream from Astra HD channel
* H264 1280x720 25fps / MP2 384 kbps DVB-S satellite stream from Arte HD channel
* MPEG2 HD 720x576 25fps (10.7 Mbps) / MP2 384 kbps DVB-S satellite stream from Hungarian M2 channel

Works OK with .ts and .m2ts containers containing MPEG2 HD and/or H264 video - seems that it has built-in AVCHD reader.

Cannot open demuxed .h264 file. Kinda strange. Maybe it depends on installed codecs - I have Haali Media Splitter which works great with any other software.

May output BR video in MPEG2 HD format only, thus any H264 is converted.

In default audio setting ("Automatic", no conversion) source audio AC3 448 kbps from m2ts/ts container is converted to AC3 224 kbps (sic!). Dialog normalization is set to -31 db which is very low, and audio bandwidth is limitted to 18 kHz.
Of course any MP2 audio has to be converted to AC3 or PCM to be compatible with BR standard.

Conversion time from H264 to MPEG2 HD is good: it took 11 minutes to convert 5 min. clip (Intel Core 2 Duo 6400).

MPEG2 HD renders to BR without any (partial) conversion, at least for the file I had.

Menu design, including pop-up, is identical to DVD one, known from previous versions of the program. Rendering quality is very good.

So, for any H264 in .ts/m2ts source TDA4 should be avoided like a plague, especially for music videos as it converts audio. Perhaps it can be avoided if audio is demuxed and imported to TDA4 separately.

TDA4 has new rendering preview window which shows what frames are being converted only. Preview for standard definition DVB-S captures shows that a lot, even the source is fully compatible with DVD standard (GOP structure, and bitrate)