Hello, I'm after some help if it is available.

I have a 1080i50 project in FCP. I think it was shot either on a Sony z5 or z7 if that's any assistance.

Sequence is HD, but wanting to down convert to SD.

Export seems fine, but once burnt via DVDSP, the slow motion footage is partly distorted and almost jumpy. The other footage looks OK, but there is a visible line of movement (for example, when you see someone clapping, there is a delay in their hand movements as they wave up and down). All looks fine on the timeline and preview screen.

Any ideas?

Wondering if firstly I am using the best exporting settings. 'Quicktime conversion' then select 'dv-pal' on best quality.

Or am I mucking up the burning stages? Have tried this on three different types of DVD's, as well as burning from both my mac and pc (via pc it was with an iso created via dvdsp)

need help asap

The short answer is to use Compressor to do you HD to SD conversion. There are some built-in settings that should work for you. Compressor will create an M2V file that you can import into DVDSP. DVDSP will then skip the encoding step and disc creation will be much faster.

If you still aren't happy with the quality try turning on the Frames controls inside Compressor. They will add a lot of additional time to the conversion, but the quality will be much better.

HINT: Inside Compressor, set an IN/OUT points so you're doing your quality control tests on only about 10 seconds of footage (instead of an hour long video which will take forever).