Trying to still obtain a quality SD for DVD downconversion and wanted some folks to give me their thoughts on this quality.

Workflow is:

Original material shot in HQ 1080p30. Edited natively in FCP.

Final sequence is exported as a self contained quicktime movie using current settings (XDCAM EX 1080p30 35mbs).

Open this file in MPEGStreamclip and select File>Export to DV with the following settings:

http://www.kicksclub.org/tony/streamclipsettings.png

Take the DVCPRO 50 file into compressor and use the preset best quality 90 minute setting.

Here's a link to the file:

http://www.kicksclub.org/tony/MPEGStreamclip_Test_DV50-MPEG-2_6_2Mbps_2-pass.m2v

Looks good to me.

Resizing a progressive signal (30p, 24p, 25p) is straightforward.

The difficulty we're having is converting 1080 interlaced lines to 480(NTSC)/576(PAL) interlaced lines. You can't simply resize an interlaced video.

The best results I've gotten is to
1) Deinterlace to 1080i60 to 1080p30
2) Resize to 480p30 (but not convert to interlaced)

This produces a very good result -- of course, any fast motion/panning will not be as smooth as the original 60i signal.

I've also tried to
1) Deinterlace to 1080p60 (60p not 30p) to maintain the smoothness of the video
2) Resize to 480p60
3) Interlace to 480i60

But the results have not been good.