So in the eternal struggle of taking HD, making a DVD, and making it look not like crap, I've hit a wall.
I've got about a ten minute video made up almost entirely of multiple Motion sequences of 2D graphics. The project is rendered in ProRes 422 with Field Dominance set to Upper (leaving it at none made all the motion projects look blurry, but changing to upper made them nice and pretty). The motion files themselves are some rendered to ProRes first, but most were imported directly into the timeline. Most were set to render with Motion Blur and Best Quality.
I exported a Quicktime file from my Final Cut sequence and it looked gorgeous. I went to Compressor, selected DVD Best Quality, turned Frame Controls on, Resize Filter to Best, Output fields to Progressive, and De interlace to Better. I also set the Field Dominance to Top First.
Upon rendering to DVD, there's faint horizontal lines/banding that is visible in any solid patch of color (including white). The text itself is pretty clear, so I don't think it's a field issue, but I'm fairly new at this so it could be! (This is occurring in the actual m2v file, but also appears when viewing a burned DVD).
I also Compressed to a variety of Quicktime/iPhone/Apple TV formats - everything looked great. So it's just happening in the DVD export.
I'm including 4 screen shots - two from the DVD export and two from a Quicktime export at about DVD resolution, showing what it should look like. I'm not sure if it's a Compressor or Final Cut issue, but am at whit's end trying to figure it out!
