how do I do this ...I used quicktime coversion and compressor.....several attemmpt but no letterbox....how to get 16:9 in the from hdv rendered to pal dv? can anyone help me with the tip?

Hi Jane,

I recently went through hours and hours of testing to do this very thing in PAL.

The big trick was, that until the recent pro-apps update (2005-02) that was released a few days ago, there was a problem with the field ordering between the transcoding of HDV down to SD mpg. That made your mpg stuttery and look like crap. Now that is fixed and a solution is much easier than before.

The best way to do this currently (with the latest update) is:

1. Export your sequence to a self contained HDV quicktime movie. This does take a while, but you will end up saving a lot of time in the encoding stage if you do this rather than export directly from the timeline in FCP.
2. Import this file into compressor
3. Select your choice of DVD MPG presets (90/120/fast/best encode), Make sure that the preset you choose is the 16:9 one.
4. Submit, and wait a really really long time.
5. When imported into DVD studio Pro, it should automatically set itself for 16:9, but if you see the compressed image, you can manually set the aspect ratio in the footage properties box.

Hope this helps

EDIT: just re-read your post that you were trying to go to DVPAL, not DVD. DVPAL is the exact same size as regular pal, just with a flag that tells it to playback at 16:9 not 4:3. So if you were to view it on your computer the image will look squished, but if you were to watch it on TV set to 16:9 the image will look correct.
I'm not sure how you want to play this back, but I would lay it back off to DV tape after importing it to a Final Cut Pro DVPAL anamorphic timeline. That should set the proper flag.

I am using FCE-HD and Compressor 2 (which was bundled with DVD SP 3) and the results were uneven. I made a 2:26 clip, which rendered out to a 1920x1080 H.264 quicktime movie in about three minutes. I rendered it in compressor under 60 minute, high quality, and widescreen. One hour(!) later, I putthe m2v file into DVD SP 3. The picture quality is very good when there's no motion, but when there's any lateral motion, it looks terrible. It's video of a train passing. It looks incredible on the original tape (HDR-HC1), but the distortion in the frame where the train is moving looks almost like a field dominance problem. The distortion is only seen in the moving train, and in the foreground during a panning shot. Stationary items are razor sharp.

It's hard to tell if the rendered H.264 QT file has this problem. It opens in the qt player, but playback is very jittery. The file is 1.9 GB, which I'm assuming is correct for a file rendered from the intermediate codec.

It makes no sense to use the H.264 codec for anything but web movies. First of all, H.264 takes a long time to encode, and next, you're introducing an unnecessary compression and decompression step into your workflow. Seeing H.264 is a lossy codec, you will loose image quality.

The right way to export your timeline out of FCE-HD is using Export -> Quicktime Movie. It doesn't have to be self contained if all footage stays on the same computer.

There have been field ordering issues as John M Burkhart said. Make sure you have the latest Quicktime version (7.0.3) and the latest Pro Apps update (2005-02).

I exported my clip as you suggested, and compressor still wants an hour+ to encode a two and a half minute clip. Any suggestions apart from buying a $3200 replacement?

Where do I get the Pro Apps update (2005-2)? I noticed this too. The conversion had serious stair-stepping/field dominance issues. Now if they can only get compressor to work faster. That has to be the slowest app I've ever seen for transcoding! Is there a better/faster solution?

The update should be available in your software update box, under the apple menu

Unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to make compressor 2 any faster. Once you have to adjust anything in the "frame controls" menu, render times get exponentially longer.

My 49 minute HDV show took 30 hours to render to SD MPG2! (2pass VBR on a dual G4 1.4Ghz powermac) On the one hand it looks great, on the other hand, that's way too long to wait. I really hope they can find some way of streamlining the amount of rendering involved soon.

I believe the difference is that this version of compressor is based on Shake's rendering engine, which is widely regarded as being one of the best if not the best quality renderer. But you do pay the price in rendering time for that quality.

Short of getting the new Quad Mac, (which would still probably take at least 8 hours), or a whole mess of macs to make a rendering cluster. There's not a lot to do except hit submit and go to bed.

I think that apple's software is at least one generation ahead of their current hardware. Maybe we'll have to wait until the Intel Macs, before they catch up.

Well, it turns out I am quite the stupid person. My version of compressor is 1.2, not 2. Looks like it's time to upgrade DVD SP. I can only assume that this will correctly handle the HDV video from FCE HD using the AIC (can I possibly get any more abbreviations into this sentence?).