I have a project that needs to be delivered 720p @ 24p fps.The majority of the footage was shot in this format(720). And a few shots were shot in 1080i @ 60i.

The 1080i footage was captured in a seperate project,exported in quicktimes using the animation codec, and imported into the 720p project. it looks like horrible (loss of color saturation, pixelated image) compared to the native 720p footage.
This project is also being done on pc avid media composer adrenaline.

What is the best/proper way to convert the footage without the giant loss in quality? i am assuming we are missing a step involving pulldown because of the frame rate issues.

Thanks!

Pulldown is when you go from 24p to 60i by placing repeats of the progressive frame on interlaced fields at a 2:3:3:2 ratio. Its kind of like a pull up I guess. I'm not sure of a way to go from 60i to 24p without using some heavy hardware like a Teranex.

Since the rest of your footage is 720p 24p I would recommend putting a pulldown in it to make it 60i and then bring the 1080i footage all into one 720p60i project and transcode the 1080i footage. Then hopefully find a place that has a teranex or some other hardware that can re-format your final project into 720p24p.

With the animation codec problem I am assuming that the media put into quicktimes was not on the MC adrenaline. Try exporting using one of the Dnx codecs, that or just 1:1 10 bit. I believe with the animation codec there is this thing about rgb and 601 that leads to it being lossless but still looking bad.