Re: DVD burned on DVDSP won't play on dvd player.

Let's state one more time, H.264 is never to be anywhere in you workflow for HDV to DVD, NEVER.

For sequences set to HDV that the footage is shoot 1080i you always want the field dominance to be upper. That is the way it is shoot that is the way it should remain throughout the entire process.

For making the m2v/ac3 try sending to Compressor from the Timeline within FCP, this is a very slow process and it ties up FCP and Compressor (unless you have FCS3.FCP7 installed). This will give you hands down the best quality. Do a test of a 5 minute section if you like. Also anytime your average bitrate is 5.5Mbps or more (can even test down to 5) use CBR instead of VBR, it is fast and it gives better results (especially when bitrate is above 6). Try it first without Frames control on. Then you can try the frames on if you want to test to see if the extra time of encoding is worth it.

m2v will always be SD 720x480, make sure field dominance is set to upper. It will play fine on NTSC lower, it just keeps the correct order of the recorded fields. Also encode the audio into ac3.

Bring these files into DVDSP, author and burn a test DVD, judge quality on a DVD player and TV.

No idea how/when you are using Toast in the process, most of your settings listed above don't make sense and are impossible for me to follow. But the short of it is, there is no reason to use Toast to make the DVDs. Use the Build/Format function in DVDSP to make your disc. Only thing I always suggest is to uncheck the Lossless Linking.

Try these and keep a journal of each step and setting you do. If you still have an issue post back with exact and clear info.

Once you get through this project I would advise you to not capture your footage as HDV, instead capture it as ProRes, to me HDV should be a acquisition format and not an editing format. There is a workflow to capture the HDV via FIrewire as ProRes. HDV is a highly compressed format (lower bitrate then SD DV) and uses compression just like DVD so that not every frame is a full frame. But converting to something like ProRes it will hold up much better throughout the post process.