720p60 to NTSC DVD = not going well yet
 

When I go out and shoot an event the primary destination will be HD DVD or Blu-Ray so I happily shoot 720p60 on the HD200.

Editing the footage is not a problem using FCP's AIC.

It would be nice to be able to deliver SD DVD's too but I have not had much luck getting a nice image. Unfortunately 480p60 is not a standard, at least I don't think so.

Is anyone else making nice SD DVD's that play well on consumer players? What's your workflow. FCP workflows appreciated.

The BR-HD50 downconverts but the image quality is not great. I wonder if Decklink or Kona would do a better hardware downconvert. Anyone tried this?

Thanks!

Did you try a DVD Mpeg2 preset in Compressor? 720P60 will have to be handles one of two ways.

You can either convert it to NTSC at 60i (480i60), using each frame as an alternating field. This will maintain the temporal "video" look.

The alternative is to skip every other frame and create a NTSC 30P file (480p30).

Let me know which one you would prefer and I can give you a detailed workflow.

Tim,

Thanks for the reply. I think 480p30 is what I'm going for as these clients would all have consumer HD televisions hooked up to consumer SD DVD players.

Wouldn't skipping every other frame result in fast motion?

BTW- I haven't tried compressor as I work with Bitvice which may be the problem here. I'll try a compressor preset and see what happens.

I'd love to hear your workflow.

Why are you shooting 60p if you know the end result will go to DVD.
Why not shoot 30p to begin with? Saving hours of work and rendering.

Hi Mike,

Actually most distribution will be HD. It's the odd few ones that I need to author a SD DVD for.

BTW- I'm having much better results with compressor after switching from Bitvice regarding temporal motion. Compressor produced a nice 480i result. I tried a 480p by switching the field dominance in the preset to "progressive" but it appears to be exactly the same result as interlaced "lower"- no difference at all.

Hmm.