There have been a number of debates on the MC-PC Forum over the past few months on how to get SD and HD to co-exist on the same timeline - with good quality.

At one point in the process you have to decide whether to try and letterbox the HD material into the SD's 4:3 format, or Put the SD clips on an HD 16:9 ratio screen with sidebars.

To get the maximum quality possible for both formats with the minimum of effort I have found that the workflow described in this Tutorial works extremely well for me. There is no need to involve oneself in uprezzing or downrezzing. No waiting for renders.

After I have a finished project I then follow the workflow I have described in my Tutorial series on AMC to DVDitPro going direct to AvidDVD as a QT-reference file, and finally to a DVD (or even Blu-Ray).

Although this Tutorial may show a different approach to this topic than you would take,  I hope you at least consider the possibilities.

Regards,
Douglas

Great tutorial, Douglas.  Thanks for going through the process on that one. 

Is it true that you would do an HD mixdown regardless of your final output (SD DVD or HD Blu-ray Disc)?  I just wanted to confirm that.

Thanks for posting this!

-Darin

Hoh:

Great tutorial, Douglas.  Thanks for going through the process on that one. 

Is it true that you would do an HD mixdown regardless of your final output (SD DVD or HD Blu-ray Disc)?  I just wanted to confirm that.

Thanks for posting this!
-Darin

Thank you, Darin.
Yes, I would always do an HD mixdown regardless of my final output -  IF I am using DVDitPro HD or Avid DVD to do my authoring in.
I cannot say how I would do it if I used Encore, as I don't have that programme.
I would absolutely avoid any intermediate transcoding..... just go direct to AvidDVD through the QT-ref file.

Here is a tutorial I made to explain my thoughts on this:

Regards,
Douglas