Testing MTS with Premiere Pro CS4 and Encore

I did some test runs this morning on importing raw .MTS 1080p 30 frames, 48 K audio (from a Panasonic HMC-150-AVCHD, progressive) and set up my Premiere Pro sequence to Edit in AVCHD 720 30 frames as it matched the correct frame size. I decided to run the raw file through Premiere out to Encore and tried three different types of burns all to standard DVDs. Here are the results:

In Blu-ray authoring mode:
I tried 30 frames and 1280 which would match the native file… with both h.264 and mpeg II automatically defaulted to 720
You can go down to 720 or up to 1920 so I decided to go up all in an effort to keep the project at 30 frames per second as the motion blurs with 24 frames as I found out in previous tests
NTSC 1920 x 1080 30 frames mpeg II…took 8 minutes through Encore to burn with no edits, no pre-renders from Premiere Pro needed. Took up 52.3 MB of DVD space (half of native file).
NTSC 1920 x 1080 30 frames H.264… took 8 minutes through Encore to burn with no edits, no pre-renders from Premiere Pro needed. Took up 52.3 MB of DVD space (half of native file).

Regular DVD authoring mode:
720 x 480 NTSC DV 30 frames using mpeg-II codec… took 8 minutes through Encore to burn with no edits, no pre-renders from Premiere Pro needed. Took up 51.28 MB of DVD space (half of native file).

Conclusions:
Quality of all 3 looks exactly the same and took the same amount of time to burn. Difference between 1920 and 720 is nil in quality and 1.02 MB less in 720 for the 50 seconds of footage. No difference in quality or file size when using mpeg II or H.264 codec for burn.

Applying New Knowledge:
I have learned that native .MTS files for the Panasonic HMC-150 in the setting 1280 x 720 29.97 frames, 48 K creates a file size of about 145.8 MB/minute, or 8.54 gigs for an hour of video recording. Burning non-rendered and uncut files takes up half the raw file space but to burn a fully edited video will really be determined by how advanced the editing is. I bought 2 16 gig SDHC cards online from a Canadian store for $38.99 each, which should last me for each shoot. Dave bought me a Western Digital My Studio RAID 4TB, Quad connectors (eSata, firewire 800 x 2, USB 2.0) for me for my birthday. What a great husband!!! The RAID will speed up editing with native files and will back up my files safely. I also have the option of daisy chaining another firewire 800 external HD if I need to (maybe for the extra back-up?) I'll have to research this one.