I had been shooting my broadcast spots in Standard Def until now. I've been using HD for corporate and digital signage.

I've finally decided to move my spot clients to HD productions. Rather than experiment I'm wondering what the workflow might be for SD broadcast delivery (I use DGFastchannel, not tape).

I shot 1080i60 XDCAM EX1 HD
I'll be editing in FCP 6.0.4.
Creating MPEG2 Program Stream in Episode Pro 5 for DG delivery.

I'd like to edit in an SD timeline.
Not sure if it'll be letter box or center crop yet since.
1080i source is upper field and I'd like to avoid filed flipping issues.
I'm wonder what timeline settings I should use.

Any thoughts?

Don't use DVCPro/DV. You'll end up with lower field first and the resultant problems. Animation codec has always worked well for me. What can your I/O card support?

Ooops, just noticed you don't have to output to tape. Try Animation on a short piece and see if you like it.

I definitely want to avoid DV/DVCPro50 etc. since I don't want to give it a round of compression. Wouldn't Animation be "overkill?" I was thinking 8 bit Uncompressed or maybe Apple Pro Res.

Baring any issues, I'm going to be delivering MPEG2 Program Stream via DGFastchannel. I've done this many times with SD source but haven't shot a spot in HD for SD delivery yet so I'm thinking about the potential pitfalls.

I would just go pro res since its almost the same data rate as the ex1 footage. I don't see the point in encoding footage to a higher res codec when the information isn't there. I personally set up all my timelines that are using long gop codecs as pro res already and it works and looks great.