DVD work flow

Greetings to all and happy holidays...

Anyone have a proven workflow to create best quality DVD from 1080i? I am using fcpx (10.1.4) and Compressor (4.1.3).

Here's my story...

I'm new to fcxp and am cutting my teeth on a 1:45 min school play shot with Canons HF20 and XA10 at 1080i (29.97i)

The goal has been to create a best quality DVD for the kids and their families. The decision to use DVD format is based on an area were some families may have no blu-ray player (I think it would have been less of a headache to just buy them a blu-ray player).

Using fcpx, I shared to DVD which changes the project from 1920x1080 to 720x480. The results were unacceptable and produce horizontal lines across moving subjects, and even along straight edges of stationary objects. Some web sites call it judder, others de-interlace?

Research led us to the murky swaps of "Field Dominance Override; Upper First, Lower First, Progressive. Interlace, and de-interlace." None of the fixes we found seemed to have any effect on our "judder" like madness.

Web sites seemed to consistently point towards using a second application such as Roxie, Compressor, or other. The workflow would be, share the project to 1080i .MOV file, then transcode into a DVD format with the above mentioned application. As I have already invested $$$ into fcpx, Compressor seemed a logical choice.

Again, confronted with the murky swaps of field dominance and interlacing, our end results are less then good.

I have even used iDVD importing the .MOV file. Again, with less the good results.

I have to be overlooking something. Sharing to DVD, a format that's been around for 19yrs, shouldn't be this maddening.

My wits and budget are at an end. If you have a working solution, I would be most grateful for your advise.

In Compressor simply set the MPEG-2 output to progressive. You will never be satisfied with DVD because it's low quality, heavily compressed standard definition. It's too far from the original to ever look good.

kman198 wrote: …  shot with Canons HF20 and XA10 at 1080i (29.97i)….

That's where the trouble starts: divide 1080 to 480 = 2.25 .. 'uneven' divider, so how should any compressor transfer your interlaced HD-source to an interlaced SDef disk? (Tom told you already, DVD is by standards just SDef). This HAS to lead to 'lines'.

Several options, I can speak only for iDVD, I'm using once a year for Grandmas&Grandpas disks.
I should mention: my sources are ALWAYS progressive, so I have no trouble with that nasty interlace-stuff.

You should apply the deinterlacer (effects/basic) to your whole project. Export as Master file. iDVD will swallow this huge proRes file and convert it down to 480i.

Another option, esp. to transfer Chapter Markers to iDVD: I made me my own 'iDVD' setting in Compressor for usage in FCPX, using the antique AppleIntermediateCodec, iDVD was made for, incl final resolution (here: PAL-land, we have 756x564). In case, you're doing 'hands free' color-corrections (like me...), it probably can help to apply the 'broadcast safety' effect, to correct 'overdone' gradings.....

Just to mention: for iDVD, mpeg2 is of no use - iDVD doesn't read muxed material.........

This worked Tom... Thanks.

Karsten,

iDVD delivered a workable project.