[Brad Elliott]

I have created 960×540 wmvs at 1400/23.98fps and played it off of a jump drive and it looked awesome.

Unless you have size restrictions you could take your data rate up to 6500 and should not have any problems.

[Brad Elliott]

The compressor presets for QT normally change A to B but replicate everything else like size, frame rate, and audio.

[Brad Elliott]

If someone put more than 2 hours on a VHS tape quality probably wasn’t their biggest concern.

Putting more than 2 hours of video on a DVD-5 will only result in quality loss but you could get it on a dual-layer disc.

Some players are picky about how well they will consistently play DL DVD-+R media. Unless the computer drive is recent a lot of drives can have issues with DL media.

You could also author and build the DVD non-DL in DSP and have Toast compress it to fit on the DVD-5.

I would consider buying a DVD-R recorder. It will save you a ton of compression time and many potential headaches. Medium quality ones aren’t that expensive.

[Brad Elliott]

Depending on the size restrictions of the CD the movie will most likely have to be SD(640×360 or 480×272 or 320×180) but you could get a 4 min 1280×720 H264 under 100MB and not have any complaints about quality.

If the majority of your footage is HD I would edit in HD and then convert the HD to your delivery size and format when you are done. If the non-HD footage quality is an issue you could edit everything but the non-HD and then drop the HD sequence into your final sequence size and finish.

If this smaller footage is only on the screen for 10 frames 3 times in the video stick with HD until the final output.

[Brad Elliott]

When you open the file in QT(you may have to do open with) and do command/Apple + I what does it say?

If the display size matches the actual size in QT you are seeing it as it was exported.

What are the Codec/size? DV? 720×480?

Does it match your sequence settings?
Do your clip settings in FC match your sequence settings?

[Brad Elliott]

AVI, H264, WMV

These are not editing formats and they don’t play nice with Final Cut. Whenever you can convert these to ProRes 422 and your editing frame rate your life will be much easier. Depending on your system you may need to find another option if you don’t have ProRes.

In theory using Compressor to scale up your images is the best option but in my experience I have had just as much luck with bringing in the ProRes QT and sizing it up with the motion tab.

Keep in mind that garbage in will usually yield similar garbage out.

If you have to edit 1920 you may want to consider playing the smaller footage over a still or another background. When you start scaling footage over 150% your quality will almost always suffer.

[Brad Elliott]

Agreed.

But Streamclip does have a 854×480 export option if you drop in a SD 16×9 VOB.

[Brad Elliott]

TMPG is an application for PCs that is very similar to Episode or Cleaner.

Have you tried testing another project to see if all exports go out of sync when converted to wmv or just this particular project?

[Brad Elliott]

I know you are Mac based but TMPG on the PC side is another option.

[Brad Elliott]

Do the showreel settings and your VOB match?

Is the footage SD/HD? 4×3 SD DVDs are 720×480. 16×9 is 853×480.
What export codec are you using? ProRes 422 would be a good place to start.

If the audio is mixed there is no simple answer for separating the VO from the other audio elements. EQ in Soundtrack Pro or Ableton Live would be a possible but not simple options.