General HD to SD Letterbox question

[Floh Peters]

How are you going to broadcast? Tape or file delivery?

If you have DVDStudioPro, you most likely will also have Compressor, which can do good conversions from HD to SD; or you could conform your timeline in Media 100 Suite to SD (or work in a SD timeline with your HD footage in Suite 2 and up). If you need to go to Tape you simply could play out a SD version; either via the hardware conversion or with the Software transcode.

[Kris Mcmullin]

Thanks Floh. Our current server for broadcast requires the .MOV file to be converted to .MPEG2 for broadcast. Our workflow out of Media 100 Suite is to export the project, Compress and burn the project to DVD through DVD Studio Pro, and then import the DVD into Corel Video Studio Pro to produce the MPEG2 file for broadcast on the server. Since there are so many steps involved, I’m trying to retain as much quality as possible. I had a previous SD 16X9 project that I simply dropped into a letterbox 4×3 timeline in Media 100 Suite, and it worked well. In this case, with the HD project, I’m hoping to use the best settings for both exporting to .MOV, Compression, and eventual burning in DVD Studio Pro. My last step would be the encoding into Corel Video Studo to create the .MPEG2 file, and then dropping it into our server for broadcast. Thanks as always!

[Floh Peters]

As I said, if you have DVDSP, you most likely also have Compressor. Then you would be much better off by doing the conversion to MPEG2 directly in Compressor, since you have much more control over the result than in DVDSP.

[Kris Mcmullin]

Thanks Floh. I actually ended up exporting the file out of Media 100 Suite and opening it in Adobe Media Encoder. The resulting mpeg2 file was really nice! I’m just wondering if Compressor would have yielded even better results. Thanks again!