Exporting HD Sequence to SD in FCP 6

[Greg Linhares]

I am working, for the first time, on an HD project in FCP 6 and am seeking advice for the most effective way to create a duplicate of my edited HD sequence and convert it into a standard definition SD letterboxed sequence for outputting to Compressor for DVD.

Would anyone have any tips or techniques that they might want to share with me on this topic? I've already tried creating a new SD sequence with a 720x480 resolution and copied my edited HD sequence into the new timeline. This "seems" to have worked, yet the video looks very poor (much fuzzier looking than standard DV content). Should I perhaps be using Compressor to rescale everything from my HD timeline rather than trying to convert everything within FCP 6?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
~Greg

[Nick Weeks]

Even thought I use FCP 5.. this should work

I edit everything on a HD timeline, then use Compressor to scale down to SD using the preset "16:9 Best DVD 90 min". Then import the m2v into DVD Studio Pro, and set the display format of the video to '16:9 Letterbox'.

The final result looks very nice on a good 4:3 SD TV. You could probably increase the bitrate a little to get an even better picture, but I always use the one already set in Compressor.

[Greg Linhares]

Thanks Nick,
That is exactly what I've finally discovered to be the best workflow as well. I was originally trying to create two separate sequences, but found it much more efficient to just export to Compressor and do all my resizing there!

Thanks again!
~Greg