Hi, I have being read that many guys have made downcoverts from HD 1080i and 720p to DV-SD. How could I make it preserving video of hight quality? Thanks to all.
Saul Martinez

Saul,

My method has always been to edit on an HD timeline, export a finished HD master.

Start a new SD timeline, drop the HD master on it and export to whatever SD requirement.

This way my consolidated project archive is on HD, making it a future proof file in case my client decide to have an HD version later on.

Ted

Edit in HD, output to HD (from Final Cut Pro), make SD MPEG-2 in Compressor or Episode, author in in DVD StudioPro, burn in Toast. As has been said, you have an HD master, and end up with a great looking SD DVD. If you use FCP, I wouldn't let it do the down-convert. It doesn't look as good. FCP's scaling isn't the best. If for some reason you had to go from HD to SD before the MPEG-2 compression, I'd bring it into After Effects for scaling or use Compressor's Framing Controls and scale it that way.
Ed

Thanks Ted and Ed, I'll try your methods. Good!!

Hi- sorry for the thread-jacking, but it's not a million miles away- any ideas on an EASY down-convert- preferably using hardware!
I've been approached by someone with three or four HDV tapes, shot on an HD100, who wants to 'download them' onto a dvd.
This is clearly not a technical person, so even if I were willing to loan them a camera (no way!) they wouldn't have a clue.
I have an HD111 and a BRD-50 and a DVD recorder- but I'm pretty sure there's no ability to down-convert directly on playback. I thought I might be able to use the hdmi out-put into my monitor, and that might output an SD signal, but no...
I've got an HDStorm hdmi card, but that's probably not an option either. Any ideas/tricks? What would happen if, for example, I ran compenent out of the deck, and into the component inputs of the DVD recorder? Would it see any picture at all? Or am I doomed to capture it all in Edius, where at least I can burn a fast and dirty dvd from the timeline?
(And what should I charge! Both arms and a leg-and-a-half? ;-))

go into your menu setting (i'm NOT with my camera for the next 3 hours, so this by memory only.. someone else chime in with the exact path if it sounds wrong)

Take your JVC HD110/111, go into menu... I think on the 2nd line down menu over (could easily be wrong) and you will see something about playback.. It's probably set to native... click, change to downconvert. You can toggle between various settings (is it PAL or NTSC?.. you mentioned you had a 111 is why i'm asking...) so lets pretend your are on NTSC, since that's what I know.. Change the numbers for PAL land. So you could change it to component out Native, 720p, 1080i, 480p, 480i. You can also change wether it's widesreen, 4:3, pan and scan etc. Results are pretty good. The weakest link I found was the off the shelf DVD burner. Since they can't plan ahead for bandwidth, they are fixed... so some odd things can happen... but it will be a quick and decent and pretty much free.

Thanks Alex- that's terrific info. And the BR-D50 seems to also have a menu option that down-converts. This is brilliant- the agent assured me it wasn't an option- which dismayed me at the time! It also means I'm able to shoot 720p and capture that as standard def, not into Avid, but at least into the Edius HDStorm component. If the quality is ok, that's very handy as it avoids the rather tedious process people seem to go through down-sizing a project later for SD dvd.
Cheers-!