I need to lay a small watermark(with fades) at only about 3% of every DVD i make for my client.

it doesnt make sense for me to re-export from FCP and encode for every DVD i make.

so i'm thinking: is there an MPEG2 editor that allows me to lay that tiny bit and for export, maintains quality of my mpeg2 source where the picture isnt altered?

if you are talking about putting something like a semi-transparent logo in a corner of the video picture, it has to be done as part of the original edit, before being exported to mpeg2... i don't know of any mpeg editor that will allow you to re-compress just part of the video frame.

John,
You might be able to achieve this with subtitles. I use DVD Studio Pro, and that allows images as subtitles. You'll just have to force the default subtitle stream on for the track that needs the watermark. I don't know about fades - I've never had a need for that with the watermark. I imagine that if you use FCP, you author DVDs with DVDSP so check that feature out in the manual.

John,
You might be able to achieve this with subtitles. I use DVD Studio Pro, and that allows images as subtitles. You'll just have to force the default subtitle stream on for the track that needs the watermark. I don't know about fades - I've never had a need for that with the watermark. I imagine that if you use FCP, you author DVDs with DVDSP so check that feature out in the manual.
If he is looking to use the watermark to protect the DVD, I'm not sure that using a subtitle stream would be optimal. Someone could just rip the video track from the DVD without the subtitle stream.

A good MPG editor - Ulead Media Studio Pro. Try the demo...it might be all that you need.

Ted