I'm sorry to hear of your current personal problems but when you are able, check out the Sony Z7 - it's got most of the features of the EX1 (apart from SloMo) but as I said, will record SD and HDV simultaneously.

The more I read about it, the more I like it.

Andy, as You wrote, that You gave others footage to work with, meaning to downconvert, I only could offer You to also send me a short clip of that problematic HD footage and I'll try my best to do a SD-DV-Quicktime with my method.

Maybe I am totally wrong, but I've just downconverted a full hd project and I am fully satisfied with the SD quality. But maybe we are really talking about different expectations.

For your example, that Z1 footage worked well and me having also a Z1 it's no wonder to me, as the Z1 is significant softer overall.
That also explains again that blurring the ex1 footage makes better sd downconversion. And that is still the only thing I do.
Getting HD into aftereffects, vertical blur, downres... voila: finest SD footage. :)

Peter

Andy I'm not quite sure this is the best way to go. Check the Z7 forum somewhere round here. I think to remember some posts that there are severe pobs to record SD and HD simultaneously to DV and the CF card. P.

Andy, have you tried using Cinema Craft Encoder MP? I have heard very good reports on it. Rather than using Compressor to do the job, its a compressor plugin but extremely powerful. All the major studios use this compression engine to make their DVDs like Spiderman 3 and Return of the King.

Its not cheap at $799 but the reviews on it say its money well spent. With Compressor you can do two passes, but with Encoder MP you can do up to 99 passes to get the very best dvd.

I have just picked up a legit copy off Ebay (comes with a dongle) for £299.

I'll have it by next week so have a serious play with it. Could well be a solution.

CINEMA CRAFT Encoder SP2 - OMNI-CINEMA CRAFT

Thanks for the warning Peter.
I'll certainly check that out.

Never heard of it, Steve but I'll have a look at it (thanks).

You can d/l a demo version of CCE Basic here: Cinema Craft MPEG Encoders - Convert AVI & Quicktime to MPEG1 & MPEG2 for DVD

There is no demo version of Encoder MP for the Mac.

There are demoes of CCE Basic and CCE SP2. Both Win only (no prob with
an Intel Mac and a Virtual Machine like Parallels and Co) to run them on a Mac, though.

Peter, do you have any experience with this plugin? I have purchased it blind through reading quite a few good reviews. Wondering if it is money well spent or a waste!

I have not yet bought the plugin but the demoes are the best and fastest encoders i have worked with so far. Will buy the plugin right after New Year (for fiscal reasons have to wait;-)). Let me know your results.

I was going to buy the plugin for mac a couple of months ago buut the pound plummetted aganst the dollar and where it would have cost me £400 it suddenly went up to £530. Luckily I saw a guy selling it on Ebay and got it for £299. he is selling Scenerist Studio 3.1 and another Mpeg encoder called Spruce DVd maestro ( whatever that is) at the moment.

It should be with me this week and providing it works OK ( the lisence will have to be changed over with Cinema Craft and it probably phones home) I will have basic results later on in the week.

Steve Spruce is the prececessor of DVD Studio Pro, Apple bought (spelling?) it, killed the win version, took the engine and gave it a new more mac-like GUI.
299 for the Mac Plugin can't be a bad investment.

OK the Cinema craft Encoder MP plugn DVD and dongle arrived yesterday morning.

It installed very easily and is fully working. Last night I put 20 minutes worth of footage on the timeline and used the Encoder MP through Compressor 3.

I did a 5 pass VBR encode. I am running Intel dual core 3 MHz with 4 Gb Ram. I found encode times were on a par with Compressors, except I did a 5 pass rather than Compressors maximum of two. Each pass is a bit faster than the previous pass, so its not like 1 hour, 1 hour, 1 hour, 1hour, 1 hour.

Results. Really excellent. And this is using basic settings out of the box. I am sure when I fully understand the PDF instruction file, which is NOT written for the layman, I will get even better results.

IMO it looks better than what compressor can produce. I am gooing to do some more testing in the next few days ( wish I could do it tomorrow but a day out with a visit to Father Christmas for my 4 year old, then friends coming a around on Friday and Saturday)

But Cinema Craft Encoder MP looks extremely promising on initial testing.

Why don't you post results you get with your methods together with examples which look great on your tv? I guess it will be possible for us to tell you what you have to do, to let your results look like them.