FCP5 & JVC-PD1 - Format Yes/No Questions

[Hugo Pinto]

Hello all.

I'm a recent FCP5 user (which I'm using to try to edit footage out of my GR-PD1 - the european version of the JVC GR-HD1), and am skimming thru the manuals while experimenting with the software suite. During my pathway, I encountered a series of questions - and for some of those, I found the answers straight away in the forum. What a neat repository this forum is.

However, I got a couple of questions for which I couldn't find a straight answer. For most of this is, I believe, because the GR-PD1 outputs progressive SD MPEG (so, much like HDV, but with 720x576 frames), so it's really in between SD and HD. if you're kind enought to help me out, I'd appreciate it. I'm writing these questions in such a way that they require only YES/No/Simple answers:

1) If my intent is to burn the footage to an SD DVD (4:3 or 16:9), what is the best format (that is, the one which provides better final quality) to work with in FCP?

2) I use MPEG Streamclip (http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html) to convert the camera's MPEG transport stream (.m2t) to an "unscaled" .m2v movie - it's the only way I found in that the movie I shot at 25p doesn't get interpreted as 50p and cut-down to a 25 fps, half-lenght movie. The problem is that when I put it into FCP, my 16x9 clip shows as a 4:3 clip (no anamorphic conversion) in the clip window. Can I avoid this and see it as 16x9? How?

3) DV is an interlaced format, correct? If the answer is "not necessarily" (meaning that I can have a progressive, 25p DV stream), would it be an option to convert my .m2t stream directly to DV and work with it in FCP5?

Thanks for your attention and time,

Hugo Pinto

[Hugo Pinto]

Ok,

Rookie error: discard question 2), since I found out that the "anamorphic" property on the clips's format tab is NOT read-only as I had supposed, and can be selected to correct the aspect ratio..

Hugo