[Sebastian Alvarez]“And why do you assume that my computer is “sub-par”? My system is an AMD 1090T CPU with 16 GB of DD3 RAM with Western Digital Black Edition hard drives. If you consider that subpar, well, you live in a very different world.”
People may consider your computer sub-par when you don’t mention your system specs when you post your problems, since you say you have an AMD product, you should check the recommeded list to see if your product is on it or contact tech support to find out if you system is capable.
Can you disconnect the mic from the cable with it still plugged into the cam, and see if you still have the hiss, do you get the hiss from the built-in mic?
If you are downscaling from HDV to SD PAL you are probably getting a 720×576 anamorphic PAL, the pixel matrix is the same in 4:3 as 16:9 the difference is the virtual pixel size, if you are trying to view on a widescreen tv it may not be seeing a widescreen flag and giving you a slightly stretched 4:3 or you may not be telling the encoder that its supposed to be widescreen.
You are trying to stuff too much into a single DVD, two hours on a DVD is straining, over 3 is too much, split into two DVDs or use a double layer DVD.
Depends on the computer you are using for the encode times, the faster the processor, the faster the encoding, burning to disk is dependent on the how fast the DVD burner is.
Example on a fast core2 duo quad 3ghz the downconvert/encode time is a little less than one to one.
You goto File Menu, Export, then Media, then select Mpeg2DVD, High Quality, under Output Name setup where you want it to go and its name, Audio: Dolby, multiplexing:None, etc, it will output two elemental streams you can open in a Encore project