I have done a search through the archives here and couldn't find a definitive answer to converting my HDV PAL project to an NTSC DVD for commercial release. I tried Compressor, but the image is jerky and the graphics look awful. Do I need to invest in Natress, do I conform in Cinema tools, or is it simply a case of changing my project to Pro-res and doing it within FCP? Your help would be much appreciated.

Absolutely not, Compressor can do the job perfectly well, you need to turn on advanced settings that will clear up the problem. However, be prepared for extremely long encode times, as you ramp up quality settings in Compressor the time to complete goes exponentially higher.

Specifically you need to turn ON Frame Controls and use the settings shown in the pic enclosed. Because HDV can fall apart easily during down-conversion try doing some 10-second test encodes of a section that has a lot of motion or motion-graphics. If these settings still aren't giving you good results you may need to bump up the quality of RESIZE, DEINTERLACE AND RATE CONVERSION to "Best".

There could be other reasons your footage is jerky, such as panning too fast for the frame-rate shot in-camera; using deinterlace filters in FCP rather than letting Compressor handle it and a few others.

Try these settings first and let us know what happens.

Be prepared for very long encode times, compressor's best settings may be satisfactory but are slow compared to other options.

Yep, Craig is right as I pointed out in this head-to-head test of Mac-encoders:

encoder shootout (http://www.go-go-godzilla.com/encoder_shootout.html)

In fact if all the quality settings in Compressor had been set to their maximum that 10-second test file would have been about 1.5x to 2x longer than that to encode!

Compressor is dog slow at doing it's work, but *it can* do it, just be patient. MPEGStreamclip can make encodes also and is faster at it when using average quality settings but when Compressor's settings are at the max MPSC can't compete.