In FCP 6.0 I just discovered that in my HDV timeline I never applied the render to "Preview". Yet before I discovered my mistake I have always exported my quicktime files fine for use as SD on DVD.

Now when I render my timeline for everything such as "preview", I'm not exactly sure what that does or even if it helps in quality for my SD on DVD. btw when I render the "Preview" a message box prompts during the process saying "Conforming HDV Video"

My question is, is the "preview" rendering step necessary? The only thing I noticed different is above the timeline, the green line (Video:Preview) changes to blue (Video:Rendered). And it seem to me that the quality in my quicktime files burned to SD DVD are the same when played back on my television. Am I missing out on something by skipping this step?

Thanks