My A1 and HV20 have finally arrived!
Can someone outline the workflow (or point me to a post) to produce an SD DVD in progressive mode using Final Cut studio.

I've shot some test footage at 1/48 24f and imported it into FCP using the HDV-1080p24 preset. The edit is complete. I then did an export using compressor 90min best 16:9.

I have now imported the resulting .mv2 file into DVDSP and burned a SD DVD but the resulting video is less than spectacular. Am I missing a step?
your help is appreciated.

Did you choose the 23.98 frame rate option (in the Video Format tab)?

Also, which DVD authoring solution did you use? Some of them are picky and will transcode 24p video into 29.97i video degrading the quality and wasting space.

A lot also depends on your encoder configuration: 23.976fps, no-fields (progressive scan), GOP 12/3 - preferably, etc.

yes, selected 23.98fps, GOP 12, GOP structure IBBP, no interlace(progressive).

I am using DVD Studion Pro 4


Maksim, not sure what you mean by "GOP12/3" I used GOP 12

Sorry, Jim, I abbreviated GOP configuration: GOP size=12, B-frames=3 (I think it's B-frames). That's what Sonic Scenarist is looking for.

One other thing you may try doing is identifying which step in your process degraded the image quality. First, look at your captured HDV video. Then, look at the converted footage on the computer, not on the final DVD. It could be that the image scaling along with MPEG2 compression cause image quality to degrade. If so, you could try resizing the image first, while exporting it to uncompressed video, which you will need around 200G of HDD space per hour. Then you can encode that uncompressed video into MPEG for DVD delivery. Also, make sure that your authoring application is not doing any transcoding of your footage. Some apps transcode 24fps footage to 60i footage, which makes it look worse.

Maksim, not sure what you mean by "GOP12/3" I used GOP 12

I have tried your suggestions but to no avail. However, I shot more footage this morning and went through all the steps again. One problem I had was that the 24f I shot previously was not shot at 1/48 like I though (very strobey). This time I made sure to use 24f and 1/48. I also used Steve Dempsey's Panalook preset and set my zebras to 90 making sure no highlights caused them to show. This resulted in at least a 1 stop difference in my exposure and a much more improved image! Just for kicks I burnt an HD DVD on regular DVD-R media (you can only play this on a G5 Mac and it was great!

I'm new to 24f so I wasn't sure if I needed to do something about the pulldown the camera adds. Like I said HDV and 24f is a new learning experience. I've been doing DV and SD DVD's for 5 years (the first isuue of FCP)