I have a 3 minute HDV project shot at 59.9somthing frames (basically 60i). I am trying to get it onto a standard dvd, but when I export to a quicktime movie file, it looks stripy whenever there is movement.

I went to play the dvd on an actual player, but the picture looks absolutely horrible, but i hope it is just a dvd problem since the mov file looks much more detailed in terms of lighting when i play it straight from the computer.

I'm not too experienced at this part of the editing phase, so how would I avoid that striping problem? Or could i just make my project into a SD format, which of course is not as crisp and sharp, but still looks good. How would i go about doing this and then moving it onto a dvd? Thanks!

Kevin

Could you tell us a little about your workflow? How are you exporting? In what codec?

What you are seeing is called pixel stretching. It's because you are taking a standard non-square frame size and squashing it into a DV frame size (720 x 480). We just have to determine where that conversion is taking place.

The stripy is from interlace artifacts. You see the "stripeys" when viewing on a computer, but not on an interlaced monitor. Problem is that interlaced displays are going the way of the Dinosaur.
Since you are downconverting to SD any way you can simply throw one field away to get rid of the interlacing artifacts.
For best results you should use a dedicated compression program to do this. Quicktime conversion aint't the best.

I've tried many different ways of exporting, but all end up as mov files. It was all originally 1080i resolution, and 16x9 aspect ratio.

I finally got it to eliminate the stripeys. But now, there is a probelm when transferring to DVD. The DVD looks significantly darker, and gives the image a very large contrast between light and dark, there are really not middle tones, or shadows defined like in the original image.

If i was to use a dedicated compression software, what would i need to use, is there something cheap and affordable (just a college student hear).

Thanks.

Kevin