DVD Studio - HD to SD hell!
 

Hey there,

I'm in the midst of a bit of a nightmare (of my own making) at the moment, and hoping some tech-savvy HD-head out there can offer up some advice.

We have some great DVCProHD 1080i (PAL) footage - a kid's show - that we want to burn to standard definition DVD. Unfortunately, the quality of our initial attempts in DVD Studio Pro came out pretty crappy. Personally, I couldn't believe how bad the image looked compared with our beautiful HD source footage.

Despite the knowledge of my DVD Studio Pro guy, and due to some time restraints, we took the HD footage to a 'pro' post-production house - thinking they must know something we don't. But their results weren't much better... and still cost us a big chunk of money! (Later, we found out they just used DVD Studio Pro as we did)

So, now, we're still where we started. We have great-looking HD footage but can't get it looking what we consider 'acceptable' on a standard definition DVD. Surely, this is possible? I've been fed a bunch of opinions (eg. from the post-house especially) that compressing HD for SD-DVD delivery 'just turns out that way'. I can accept a certain amount of degradation but, by comparison, the end result is truly atrocious!

I mean there must be a way to get nice clean pictures from HD to SD-DVD... I see them every day at the video store!

Can someone enlighten me?

Thanks in advance,

ALEX

What do you mean by "crappy" images? If you could be a little clearer with your description, we might be able to provide some more useful suggestions.

How are you downconverting in DVD Studio Pro? Are you using the presets made for SD DVDs? After you select what preset you're using, open up the Inspector window and look at your transcoding settings. You might need to adjust your bit rates and look at how the video is being down-sized, like if it's being letterboxed or squeezed.

The stuff you see at the video store has been scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot compressed by a professional using true pro grade compressioning tools, not just a template in software included as a "bonus" in a $1600 software package.

As well, I've had better experience with 720P material going to SD DVD than I have 1080i. Your mileage may vary...

Hi Alex,
I have great results but use Compressor to encode the video and just let DVD SP burn the final DVD. I have no idea what results you would get from DVD SP encoding.

Hi Alex,
Just a thought but is your original "interlace upper field" if so you must make your DVD the same, when I first did some DVD's from HD I didn't realize AVCHD is upper field and the default on my program to make a DVD was lower field, it looked awful caused by interlace jitter, now I always change it to upper field and it looks fine.
Bryan

How do you get DVD PRO to just build the disc and burn without in encoding? i think that's my problem! I have tried everything and wasted my entire weekend. I have awesome footage shot in HD 1902. i tried exporting as QT file and importing that into compressor, then bringing that into DVD studio pro. after DVD studio pro encodes and burns the disc, it looks pixelated on tv!

i got a great looking DVD SD disc by using iDVD! but i want to use DVD studio pro. i exported from final cut pro 7 to QT H.264 and bypassed compressor. I let iDVD encode and the disc looks good. too bad DVD Studio pro 7 doesn't handle H.264..... iDVD (cheaper program does!)

so i think it is being ruined because if you use compressor, DVD studio pro encodes again! how do you turn off encoding in DVD studio pro! i already ecoded in compressor! maybe i will just stick with the cheaper iDVD but i don't want to!

i have to also figure out bluray. i am moving from pc to mac and need to figure out workflows from HD to SD DVD and HD to blu ray on mac. thanks!
Steve

Your problem is downconvert and it is well known, read here:
Precomposed Blog - HD to SD DVD - Best Methods

Steve, you need to be importing a .m2v file and a .ac3 file into DVD Studio Pro, NOT a quicktime. These will import with a green (not yellow) dot next to them and will mean they will not need to be recompressed. You can create this in compressor by putting your quicktime into compressor and using the DVD Best Quality or DVD fastest presets (Best/fastest do what they say).

As you are starting from HD, you need to downres your footage at some point. To do the best job of this in Compressor you need to turn frame controls (editing the preset after you have dragged it onto your clip and choose one of the better but slower resize adjustments - not at my mac right now so can't tell you what exactly the drop down is called but once in the preset it's pretty easy to navigate around and figure things out)

You shouldn't be going to h.264 first in either case. You should use a low loss codec (like prores 422, prores 422(Hq), or prores 4444) as your export medium and then compress THAT to the M2V.

Also as someone has mentioned it's LIKELY that you are having field order issues, as you are going from 1920 x 1080 interlaced footage, which will have upper field first interlacing, into DVD studio pro which is expecting Lower Field First interlacing in an NTSC timeline, and is unlikely to be aware that your HD sized quicktime is upper field first, so will do a bad job of encoding it and get your fields back to front.

Using the DVD presets in compressor will fix this, presuming of course that it detects the correct field order (it usually does but can have problems if you have mixed progressive footage from animations etc in your timeline), in the preset you have an option to let it automatically detect or choose upper or lower field order - assuming your timeline in final cut was set to upper (most likely) then you should be save in changing this to be upper rather than auto, that way it won't 'guess' wrong.

There is quite a lot to achieving good DVD compression, a lot of good answers can be found on the web (or in the manuals of the programs you are using). Take some time doing some research and trying to understand the issues and solutions I have outlined above and you shouldn't have too many problems.

hey guys!! success, i'm pretty sure. stayed up till midnight last night looking over all settings, making new menu from scratch in dvd studio pro and importing the file encoded from compressor. from what i can tell, i did nothing different except:

compressor setting - FRAME CONTROL! this was already on by the way when it looked pixelated for me. the only thing i changed was resize filter = BEST and changed output fields to progressive. these 2 little settings and it looks different. i have yet to view it on the tv upstairs. on the imac it looks nice...i was happy.

i did notice some pixelation, especially with text / titles. this is when it was full size on the 24" imac. when i right-clicked and selected half-size, it went away...hope it looks good on the tv.

the only thing i notice that i don't like is the video clips i chose for the drop zones in the menu. they do look noticably pixelated! but, i exported 30 second clips using the exact same compression preset, exporting right from FCP7 timeline into compressor. not sure what the deal is with that. looks fine during preview in DVD studio pro but not on actual DVD.

to answer my question from before... doesn't look like DVD studio pro encodes again. compressor already did it so it just burns it after compiling the menu. for the menu, 45 minute movie, it took about 8 mins. to encode the entire disc!

encoding the 45 minute movie directly from FCP7 to compressor with the 90 minute best setting (tweaked by me to be CBR 7), it started at 9:30pm roughly, and ended at 3:45am. not too bad...about 6 hours for 45 mins? so i guess 12 hours for 2 hours you can say...to go from 1920 HD to 720 SD via compressor. i will keep you posted of any other events. you guys were awesome!

i knew what i was doing, but those 2 little settings....why would they do that! it's tricky and there are so many workflows!

i wonder if this should be a concern.... i shoot in 30p and capture in 1080i...easy setup...then i export to progressive. going from progressive to capturing in 1080i then to progressive vs. 1080i.... throws me.

i was wrong. the video is better, but still a little pixelated. what i'm going to do now is export my 1920 HD timeline as 720. can someone let me know what to choose? what is the difference between:

DVCPRO 720p
apple pro res 720p
HDV 720p

with apple pro res, it exported as 1280X720. i wanted 720X480. i'm hoping that downsizing during file/export/quicktime movie, then importing that QT 720X480 into compressor will be better than exporting the entire HD timeline into compressor.

the quality is good going from HD timeline to compressor but i know it could be better. i am picky but it can be better. video i shot with my non-HD GL2 DV cams looked so much better than what this is doing now.

thanks!

Steve - 720p anything is a high definition format - the 720 refers to the vertical pixel count. Can be confusing I know.

If you are going straight from Final Cut to SD you would need to choose an NTSC output format (Sometimes referred to as 525 because of the number of scanlines, but this would only be in AJA codecs etc which I imagine you are not using.)

Don't choose any of the 720p settings, they will all give you the same thing in terms of resolution. Choose an NTSC setting.

hi, thanks. stupid question but can you give me an example of NTSC setting? i am still messing with this after all these days! countless discs and experiments. a handful of people recommended apple Pro Res 422, so i chose that, as 1920X1080, and having DVD studio pro do the encoding during burn. i chose CBR 7. i am staying away from compressor! i hate it. i'm sure if you guys saw my videos you would think they look nice but i know they can be better. something is missing. i can't stand seeing ANY PIXELS! IT DRIVES ME MAD! the counter tops in the kitchen at an angle are made up of tiny squares when it should be a straight line!!!!! it looks this way before i burn a disc in DVD studio pro. the master file looks awesome before i bring it into DVD studio pro.

Oh goodness....

NTSC = 720x480. That is the only NTSC SD broadcast standard I am aware of.

So let's do this.

Post a still frame of your video before encoding, after encoding, and a screen shot of your encoding settings, and let's sort this out.

I'm afraid I can't help - i captured footage into fcp as Prores 422, i edited, i color corrected, i output a master prores file at highest quality settings (i dont care how long it takes to render), i used compressor to compress to MPEG2 (using 1 pass vbr, not 2 pass at highest quality), i brought it into DVDPro (it doesn't recompress), and my final dvd footage looks NICE.

what am i doing right hehehe (sorry)

sheriff, sounds like i'm doing the same as you but i'm seeing slight pixelation. i will try to get screen grabs. i have so many figures running in my head. let me see if i can get this down here....

i shoot Canon cams... HV30 and XH A1. quality on cam is 1920 and i shoot in 30p ALWAYS! a friend told me to capture to FCP7 as 1080i so that is what i did. FCP couldn't see the cams at first so the auto select chose 1080i60 so i left it at that.

now, knowing this... i exported the timeline as APPLE PRO RES 422 1920X1080 30P 48KHZ. i'm wondering if i should have selected the 60i version since that is what my timeline was?? or does it not matter?

so i bring this QT video into DVD studio pro and it looks a little pixelated, encodes to disc, and still a little pixelated. it's not awful...but there are lines on the counter tops.....made of squares. does it look good? yes.... but there is room for improvement. jagged lines should not show up on anything. most lines are good but some are not. when i was shooting strictly in DV with canon GL1 and GL2 cams.... i had no pixelation at all on DVDs.

i also made sure the sequence settings for video processing tab in FCP7 is set for fastest and when i ever made a DVD i set for CBR of 7. in DVD studio pro i also did the trick of
Select icon to turn Frame Controls "On." "Resize Filter "Best. CHANGE "Output Fields to "Progressive" Leave deinterlace to Fast (Line averaging), and "Adaptive Details" box checked.

when i saw this before while using imovie09, it was bad..... and that was going from imovie right to burning a dvd. i figured out to get it looking night and day, you have to export to a QT movie from imovie and import that QT movie into iDVD....AT THAT POINT IT LOOKED GREAT! and i was working with hi rez 1920 HD files!

maybe this info will help someone to help me. i have been working on this every day straight for a couple weeks. too bad i don't have anyone to look over my shoulder. maybe i should film a movie and post it to youtube of my workflow........

again, it's not bad..... but i don't think i should see any squares at any time. also, faces look pixely...jittery.... like a vhs tape...know what i mean? it's like it goes through a 2nd compression or something.

Steve, sounds like your problems start early in the workflow (you need to sort out progressive vs interlaced) and stay with you through the workflow. I'm not surprised you're having issues given what you've just posted.

The first question anyone is going to need to know is what format you are actually recording in on the cameras... Whatever THAT is, is what should stay through the workflow.

ok, thanks, that does make sense and that's what i thought but an editor who works in FCP all the time said to capture in 1080i60 and i will be fine. he said it will encode whatever i shoot in, to 1080i60 as it captures. maybe i will try it in 1080 30p.

i will have a look at my project / sequence settings to see if there is something for 1920 30p, which is what i shoot in. the Canon HV 30 tape is shot at that rez i believe. for the XHA1 i believe i'm using 1080 30p. i always shoot progressive so i guess i should set the capture to be progressive as well. he said i would encode it during capture... i guess not?

it looked good during playback as a QT file...i guess it may cause the issue in dvd studio pro. if any of you shoot in 1080-30p, what do you set to capture in? can i select pro res? i heard great things on that. then there is the HDV or DVC pro? maybe HDV1080-30p
thanks so much!!!

I could be wrong but I think the other post is on the money: capture at the same settings you shot at.

I would never capture at a different setting i over p as I would think that would start messing with your footage.

I'm only new to the HD to SD DVD but I haven't yet exported a movie and then imported into compressor: I use the export using compressor selection in FCP and then in compressor select best quality 90 minute DVD and then tweak the frame controls as was posted somewhere else here on the forums.

The best results I go by far doing some EX1 output tests was to use the share via DVD setting in FCP which burned a DVD straight out of FCP but you're limited in what you can do with menus etc.

this does make sense to me. not sure why that guy told me just do 1080i regardless.
i will experiment with some 30p settings. i shoot in 1920-30p. for capture i was looking at either an HDV 1080 30p... or ... apple pro res 1920 30p... do you guys have a preference for capture?

"do you guys have a preference for capture?"

Capture IN WHATEVER FORMAT YOU SHOT IN, and edit too - THEN put that into Compressor at "(SD)DVD 60 minutes", then put the .m2v and .ac3 output files into DVDSP (which won't need to re-Compress.)

thanks martin. i know to select the 1920 30p, but would you take HDV or PRO RES?
HDV 1920 30p or APPLE PRO RES 1920 30P.

Hi folks
 

This is an interesting thread. I wonder what to do in a case when a project involves combination of progressive, interlaced and time-lapse from DSLR footage on the same FCP time-line?

Steve I am also curious if you win your sanity back. Keep us updated!

Regards,
Pavel

Pavel, yes, that is a very interesting question and one i thought of myself. either final cut would encode the entire timeline via rendering, to one codec you specify or you would have to encode them all first then drop them in. i would think as you capture it would encode it over if you shot with different cameras in different formats. sounds like it could be a nightmare. as for me, thanks for checking on my sanity. i had to stop, as i was working on it daily since the first week of november. it was turning me into a mad man. i had to back away from it, which is something i rarely do. what i have now looks good but it still bothers me because i notice little squares here and there. i took many bits and pieces of this great forum and other things i found online and put them together in my phone for quick reference. i will start filming, keeping it all the same. if i shoot in 1920 30p i will capture in 1080p or 1920p if there is one, apple pro res....i'm going to try using apple pro res 1920 30 for capture, edit and export. that should give me a difference.

If you are working with interlaced footage and progressive in the same project, you must either deinterlace the progressive footage (using the best tools you have, and live with the loss of temporal resolution and/or vertical resolution) or render out your progressive footage as interlaced (in which case you must live with the loss of vertical resolution.)

Shooting progressive to deliver interlaced is less of a problem than the reverse generally, unless you shoot your progressive footage without baring in mind your panning speeds etc.

Craig: Thanks for your input. Well, I shot all my video on XH A1 as 25f and some only for slow-motion in 50i and some time-lapse. Would that mean I have to de-interlace the entire footage?

Now, I did capture and edit with Easy setup HDV 1080 25p, before exporting the final edit with effects, etc. and changing the sequence to Apple Pro Res and rendered with current setting and got a beautiful and crisp file with my film 41min = 30 GB.

When I went DVDSP route made the film look very pixelated especially around the text and subtitles and wide angle shots perhaps in a similar way as Steve's. I pan very sparingly as I come from the world of photography.

Now I try Compressor as advised in this thread. What would be yours or anyone else's definite answer on proper delivery of DVD, both in PAL in NTSC (for me) formats considering I have this colour rich and pixel free film in Apple Pro Res Codec rendered with Upper field first?

Is Mpeg Stream clip also a consideration for down conversion?

I should mention that I went through most of the Lynda's educational videos on the subject, but found very little information there on downconversion from HDV to DVD.

Thank you and everyone else for their help.

Kind regards,
Pavel

Update
 

Ok, went the Compressor route, frame control on, resizing Best, Field Dominance Upper, VBR setting 5.5Mbps max. 7.7Mbps as advised on Lynda's DVD.

DVDSP did build the DVD and the results are much better, the titles are acceptable but still some pixelation occurs, the subtitles are much cleaner as well as the overall image. But I am seeing mostly on my 50i interlaced lines, even on the slowed down footage, hmm.

Now I will go ahead with the same setting but changing to Progressive scan in Compressor instead of Upper field (top).

Am I missing something?

Hi Pavel, you will need to deinterlace the footage on you timeline that is interlaced, and only that footage. Either that, or change your timeline to interlaced (which will probably yield better results in terms of motion, but less satisfactory results in terms of any still frame footage or graphics.)

Thank you. Should I keep the Compressor setting with field dominance Upper first as some people say or as some others say make it Progressive? I would say Upper as the original acquisition was Upper. But then again who knows?

Also I should mention that in Compressor in the Frame Control pane I did set in the Resizing Control section Deinterlace to Better with adaptive details On. Would that suffice?

Hi All
 

I think I will skip the Compressor altogether and will go HC Encoder route via Avisynth. I came to understand that Compressor just won't produce that type of quality I am looking for.

Interesting article is also found here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/distribu...-encoders.html

Best,
Pavel

Hi Pavel, From the results I've had it's better to stay with upper field if that's how it was captured, I'm not familiar with how Mac programs handle AVCHD h264 but with the programs I've been using I stick with the original MTS files for my edit and only re-encode to DVD mpeg2 at the end, and the results are better than anything I've done before from SD DV

Bryan

hey guys, what's up? i am sure compressor works really nice but i almost drove myself mad, working on all these different configs for 3 weeks straight. what i did, and it works great...for me anyway....and looks nice too!.....

make sure the timeline settings for final cut pro 7 are set to apple pro res 1920x1080 30p.

i shot footage in 1920 30p on the canon hv 30 and xh a1.

edit in final cut pro

export...file / export quick time. i export as quicktime movie and select the custom option for codec as apple pro res 1920x1080 30p, which is the same the timeline is set for. this looks great.

i bring this hi rez .mov file right into idvd (stopped using dvd studio pro.) idvd is even faster, looks great, and does the encoding right. i set the options for idvd for professional quality. idvd does the encoding on its own. took about 4 hours for 45 minutes footage.

idvd did a nice job. my titles have no pixelation and things look great! the only thing i don't like is with faster motion...people running past the camera on tripod...there is some jerkiness. i think this is attributed to filming in 30p. if i filmed in 60i, that wouldn't be there but i CAN'T STAND THE CLEAN LOOK....looks too much like a video camera at a kids bday party. what if i filmed in 30p but captured in 60i and exported in 60i? i don't want to cause a problem.

right now i'm assuming you have to capture and export based on how you filmed....30p or 60i, from filming, all the way to the end.

currently i'm working on blu ray on the mac. i will experiment with exporting a qt .mov as i am now, and importing into adobe encore cs4 for the enode. the H.264 looks outstanding so i will select that in encore.

I know that the OP has not posted since this past May, but I am quoting this to show you that kind of result is all too typical if you rely solely on the NLE for the downconversion of interlaced video content. The NLE's built-in encoders do a terrible job of downsizing interlaced videos: They either deinterlace everything (which throws away one-half to three-fourths of the total video information even before downsizing) or nothing (which nearly always leaves obvious, and often severe, motion artifacts). And their resizing does not use the most appropriate alogarithm for the conversion of square pixels to non-square pixels.

On the other hand, the nice-looking results done on professional movie-studio SD downconversions from HD are done with astronomically expensive hardware-based motion-adaptive deinterlacers--priced in the order of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per system. And the video store that you visited for those "nice" HD-to-SD conversions might simply have been playing SD media (standard DVDs which, once again, had already been authored by a professional motion picture studio) or playng HD media on an HD player that's connected to an SD monitor (and the HD player will likely do a better job of this downconversion than an NLE by itself).

And there are freeware software programs (such as AVISynth/VirtualDub with the appropriate freeware plug-ins) which can produce HD to SD downconversions which look nearly as good--but they are very slow to process the videos (they take as long as 10 to 12 times the original length of the video clips themselves to do their work).

By the way, before I discovered AVISynth and VirtualDub and their plugins, I used to use an NLE alone in downconverting 1080i HD to 480-anything SD. But my results ranged from the sharp but artifact-laden videos coming out of Vegas and Ulead/Corel to the soft and often blurry videos coming out of Pinnacle Studio. Neither result proved to be what I consider 'acceptable', so I kept searching for an effective but not-too-costly solution.

Hi Steve,

the look depends also on the frame rate, shutter angle and aperture setting. Also you may need to do additional research into plug ins that help with curves and saturation closer to film feel. I strongly suggest not to shoot in 30f for narrative projects, but in 24f if you wish to have a bit of "film look"

Look into Nattress plug ins I believe there is a conversion from 30f to 24f. People use them and are happy.

Best.

thanks Pavel, i will do that. will panning be even more jittery if shooting in 24p? i like the smoothness of 60i but it's too clean...like video cameras from the 90s.

Hi guys,

Just a thing ...

I have had the same problem - but my solution is ... how can i put it ... complicated!

I've imported the footage from the P2 - done the project - exported to tape - from tape imported it as DV(Wide) (downscaling from the camera [FX1]) ....
The rest ... Encore ...

Result = Pretty nice looking video ...

Regards,
Soreen

It was mentioned a couple of times in this thread, but as a rule, the encoder that DVDSP uses will not produce the highest quality DVDs. There are third party encoders that do a much better job.

The big, hardware based Cinemacraft encoder is now available in software form and is considered to be the cream of the crop. Other encoders that cost money come from Sheer Video, BitVice, etc. These encoders will all provide results that surpass what DVDSP can produce.

Sorin also touched on something that used to be discussed here a lot when converting HD to SD. The camera can often do a better job than software!

-gb-

I'm not sure why your HD to SD down-conversions take so long with AVISynth or VirtualDub, unless perhaps you are using a really old computer.

Using VirtualDub, can produce excellent down-conversions from HD to SD, and (with a reasonably modern PC) isn't that slow. I wouldn't do anything fancy (or time consuming) for deinterlacing 1080i60 source to 30p - simply drop a field. Dropping a field gets you to 540 lines (progressive), before resizing. Then simply use Lanczos resizing to get to 720x480.

Another way to do deinterlacing, is simply resize whole frames, telling the resizing filter that the source is progressive (don't check the box for resizing interlaced source). What you effectively get is a blending of fields that gives you a result somewhat akin to having shot at 1/30 shutter (if your source was 1080i60 at 1/60 shutter). For footage with very little motion, this can work very well. With low motion footage, it can reduce judder subtly and also effectively act as a temporal denoiser.

Another thing you can do with VirtualDub, is apply some visually lossless denoising with MSU's (free) denoising filter. With typical footage, on the lowest preset, MSU's denoiser will produce a result that is visually the same as the source, yet significantly cleaner for final compression. Using the MSU denoising filter will slow things down a bit, but it's not that awful with a reasonably powerful CPU. (I don't suggest using the option for GPU acceleration with that filter. It can increase performance noticeably, but can also often result in undesirable artifacting.)

Personally, I don't see much point in using a really expensive encoder, like Cinemacraft's, for MPEG-2 encoding to make a DVD. TMPGEnc 2.5 is a very low cost encoder, that produces excellent results. The Cinemacraft encoder will give you slightly better results, but not significant enough to notice at all during playback. You have to step through the footage frame-by-frame, and blow it up, to see any difference, really (awfully minor).

I think I might have had some settings incorrect. I retried downsizing again--only this time, I separated the fields ("bobbed") in AVISynth, then resized and reinterlaced ("woven") in VirtualDub--and found that the process (on my Core2 Quad Q9450 PC running Windows) took about two-and-a-half times as long as the length of the video (five minutes of processing for every two minutes of video recorded). And that is from 1920x1080/60i to 720x480/60i, TFF (or UFF). Downsizing from 1280x720/60p to 720x480/60i proved to be significantly faster than from 1920x1080/60i to 720x480/60i because downsizing from 720p60 material does not require bobbing or weaving, only resizing and scan-conversion (dropping alternate scan lines from each frame after resizing). Plus, if I were preparing the new AVIs for standard-definition DVD, I would now make sure that I set the "output" file at YV12 (4:2:0) so that the editing and/or DVD authoring software don't have to perform their own color space conversion.

And yes, in my earlier days (when I first used AVISynth/VirtualDub), I used to drop one field then deinterlace the rest--but the resulting videos I got were all a flickering, choppy, stuttering, blurry mess (something that I never noticed on the HD 60i originals but made painfully clear on downsized SD copies). I want smooth motion, not this stuttering flickering cr-p, when my original source is native 60i video. Dropping a field only works correctly with 30p video that had been encoded in a 60i transport stream, IMHO (and even then, I would have ended up losing half the vertical resolution in the final image, effectively making it a 720x240/30p video).

And you were still thinking that 60i equals 30p. That is incorrect. The "shutter" in a 60i camera refreshes every 1/60 second--and each 1/60 second contains a different image. A camera which records in 30p, on the other hand, either refreshes only every 1/30 second ("native" 30p) or electronically splits the frame into two separate half-rez fields to match a 60 fps frame rate (30p embedded in a 60i transport stream).

I have no idea why you are separating the fields, resizing, and then recombining them. If you want to resize interlaced footage, and get interlaced footage as a result, simply check the box next to "Interlaced" in the dialog for resizing and, unless I'm utterly mistaken, the resizing algorithm you choose will be applied to the fields individually (no need for all the extra fooling around).

DVD video does not allow 60p footage. If you want 60i, then no deinterlacing should be done at all (at any point in the workflow). If you do want to deinterlace the footage (and make a DVD using 30p footage), with 1080 line video, you have enough lines to be able to simply drop a field (no further action required to deinterlace the footage) and yet have enough lines in each frame left to still be downsizing (result has a full 480 lines of resolution).

Of course dropping a field and then "deinterlacing" will result in a mess. Dropping a field deinterlaces the footage, in and of itself. Every line in each individual field is acquired at the same time. The individual fields are progressive images by nature. If you drop one of the fields from 60i footage, what you are left with is defacto 30p footage. Applying a deinterlacing filter, at that point, is completely nonsensical.

No. Not at all. I am in no way confusing 60i for 30p source footage. What I said was, if you downsize a 1080i60 frame (shot at 1/60 shutter) to 480 lines, without telling the resizing algorithm that the source footage is interlaced (2 individual fields per frame), doing so will effectively deinterlace by blending the two fields together, and the end result will be very similar to looking the same as if the source was shot as 30p at a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second and resized to 480 lines (entirely different sources yet a very similar end result when resized that way, to SD resolution).

From what I read, the built-in "Interlaced" setting within the resize filter only works if the final output is to be PAL, and does not work properly if the final output is to be NTSC SD. But that might have been changed since that advice was first posted.

I know that DVD video does not allow 60p footage without a conversion to one of the supported frame rates. And I also know that already progressive footage does not need deinterlacing; in fact, deinterlacing already progressive footage actually degrades image quality.

Actually, I got that huge mess even without "deinterlacing" that. This is because none of my TV sets (LCD or CRT) can properly display 30p to begin with--they handle only 60i or 60p footage correctly, and they all interpret 30p footage incorrectly.