[Jeff Meyer]

The camera looks soft in the screenshot..is the HD material (before a transcode) sharp?

I would edit in a ProRes timeline with the same frame size, pixel aspect, frame rate, and field order you captured in – 1440×1080, 29.97, upper. I would take a Current settings export into Compressor and do all of the conversion there.

If you need to work in a SD timeline (background plate is 720×486, graphics are prebuilt in SD, etc.) I would capture the footage in HD, then drop the HD footage onto the SD timeline, paying the render cost along the way. Final Cut will automatically apply a shift fields filter to handle the field order mismatch when you bring content from the Browser or Viewer down. It won’t do this if you copy/paste. Final Cut will also take care of the scaling and distort. If you turn the quality on the Sequence settings up (notes below) this workflow should look pretty darn good for SD.

Considering the project that’s already cut, I would open the Sequence Settings and be sure the rendering is on best quality for the Motion Scaling and 10 bit High Precision YUV for the color, and unless there’s a lot of pride or client money hanging out there I would call it good. Some projects are worth troubleshooting, and sometimes you’ve put so much time into something you just need to call it good and finish it up.

[Jeff Meyer]

We can help you get a better product, we just need to know details. Knowing you’re having interlacing issues makes it a lot easier to give relevant, on-topic advice than hearing you want to use more space on a DVD or hearing that you’re Apple certified. If you feel like I’m insulting your intelligence asking simple questions I don’t intend to, I just need to make sure we’re talking on the same level. When troubleshooting issues with your students I’m sure you start at the basics.

Knowing we have an interlacing issue at hand, let’s start at the source. You say the project was shot on HDSLR at 29.97. If it were 23.976 we would know it were progressive, but with 29.97 we can’t be certain. Let’s dig a bit deeper so we know if the footage was sourced interlaced or progressive.

If the project was shot on a Canon DSLR (T2i, 5D Mk2, 5D Mk3, 7D, 60D, etc.) or Nikon HDSLR the footage was shot progressive – no field dominance. These manufacturers do not shoot interlaced footage with their HDSLRs.
If the project was shot with Panasonic (GH2) it could have been acquired interlaced or progressive. You’ll have to look into that with the DP, or check the original, unconverted files.

With the info above do you know if was the video interlaced or progressive?

You have SD files living on your timeline it sounds like. The standard HDSLR practice is to edit HD, then convert SD at he end. This produces an HD master and involves less time converting footage. Converting to SD up front for an SD deliverable is a perfectly fine workflow choice, and it saves disc space, but it needs to be done with care.

When you converted the footage to SD, did you convert to interlaced video at that point? If so what field dominance did you establish – lower or upper? Does your timeline have the same dominance?

[Jeff Meyer]

Ryan gave a perfect response – Chris was actually incorrect here.

The limitation is a DVD player simply can not read and process 4GB of data in 30 minutes. If you want to burn 30 minutes worth of content onto a DVD disc that’s universally compatible the result will have less than 2GB of data on the disc. If you want higher bitrate SD you’ll have to consider a different delivery such as, tape (DigiBeta, DVCPRO), BluRay, or a file based option.

Apple can be as idealistic about helping people as they like, but this is a physical limitation of the DVD format. No amount of idealism in the world will change the answer. With DV50 you’re constrained to 50mbps. With a DVD the limit 10.06mbps or less for video, audio, and closed captioning. Feel free to read the Data Rate section if you don’t trust myself or Ryan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

I would imagine Apple would have educated you about standards compliance. Actually, given how standards compliant FCX was at release, I take that back.

[Jeff Meyer]

As Shane said above, 1440×1080 SQUARE pixels is the frame size you want for your 4×3 footage. You also want progressive video. The 5D footage is progressive. No field dominance.

Do be aware 1440×1080 also comes in 1.333 pixel aspect ratio, which would stretch to fill a 1920 frame size. If you’re getting a full width frame from 1440×1080 clips you’ll want to right-click on a clip (or multiple clips) and select remove attributes, then remove DISTORT. You want 1440 square, which should leave black on the sides.

The math to get a 4×3 frame size for 1080:
1080/3=360 (the 3 comes from 4×3)
360×4=1440 (the 4 comes from 4×3)

Don’t forget you’ll also want to change your frame rate to 23.976 while you’re going through Compressor.

[Jeff Meyer]

Export a QT out of Final Cut using Current Settings. This is a full quality master.

Do a ProRes422 conversion in Compressor with all of your Frame Controls, resizing, rate conversion, etc. No need for ProRes HQ at this stage, as any benefit will be lost in the m4v conversion – but feel free to use HQ if you’re compelled to go that direction.

Convert the 2nd ProRes file to the m4v file.

==

If that doesn’t work consider trying MPEG Streamclip for the mpeg conversion.

[Jeff Meyer]

This should take care of your widescreen iDVD issue:
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS2179

Alternatively, use DVD Studio. It’s designed to give you best results, and it’s not rocket science to use. Do select the 16×9 Letterbox option instead of 16×9 Pan-and-Scan. 16×9 letterbox only applies a letterbox on 4×3 setups, but stays full screen on 16×9 setups. Unless you want the sides cropped off on 4×3 setups.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3962937?start=0&tstart=0

[Jeff Meyer]

I’ll echo what Ryan says with Adobe Creative Suite. Premiere, After Effects and Media Encoder all take Canon XF/C series MXF files without any troubles.

You could turn the trial on, drop the MXF files into Media Encoder, and use that to convert to Apple ProRes. Set up your ProRes settings for a single clip based on the format you shot with, then save those settings as a preset. When you drop a second clip in it will take on the last unmodified preset from the previous clip.

I use Media Encoder for all my format conversions. It’s multicore aware, so it’s pretty fast. Unless you’re using Quicktime components. Quicktime components to through Quicktime’s 32 bit architecture.

[Jeff Meyer]

If it’s going to web wouldn’t 640×480 (or better yet – the final video size) using a square pixel aspect ratio be the correct choice?

[Jeff Meyer]

Short answer: no.
Technical answer: yes.

If you look at the white paper on ProRes ( https://images.apple.com/support/finalcutpro/docs/Apple-ProRes-White-Paper-July-2009.pdf ) page 15 tells us that some generation loss will happen with the ProRes422 family, but they hold pretty stable from the 3rd generation onward. For most work this generation loss won’t be substantial enough to warrant going to an uncompressed workflow.

[Jeff Meyer]

Might give ProRes or Animation a try. If you do animation consider using AVI instead of Quicktime. In FCP you can use File -> Export -> Quicktime components to create AVI files.