sorry, couldn't come up with a better subject line there :)

i've just seen a tutorial which shows me how to use my captured HD to make a GOOD-quality SD DVD...rather than render out the clip which would make a blurry and cra##y looking SD, you can quite simply use the 'straight to DVD' feature in PPro.
http://www.esnips.com/web/Premiere-Pro-2-Video-Tutes

trouble is, i don't like those PPro DVD templates, esp. now i'm used to Encore.

Can i use the .m2t file from PPro2 to make a GOOD-quality SD DVD in Encore? Anyone with experience of this?

(just read that you can export the PPro timeline straight into Encore in PPro CS3, which is great, but doesn't answer this problem)

p.s. i'm not willing to buy Cineform/Aspect HD etc, until i know for sure there ISN'T a free way of using my HD footage efficiently!

There is no tutorial currently available at that link.

But all you have to do is import your HDV project into a SD project, open the original sequence, scale everything down, and export.

This is temporary since the softness was fixed in CS3.

Export the resized HDV clip from within a SD project as MPEG2-DVD, and you will end up with 2 files, a .m2v video clip @ eg 720x576 and a .wav file. These files can now be imported into Encore. You can NOT import HDV footage into Encore...it needs to be resized to 720x bla bla bla.

The PP2 DVD menues can be customized, Open your DVD layout, choose a template, click on the dvd layout window and look in your Effects controls. There are options to import your own images and audio files, If you click on the titles in the dvd layout you can change the text aswell.

Oh and the link works fine.

This is temporary since the softness was fixed in CS3.

YAAAYYYY!!!