Re: How to burn HDV footage onto a standard DVD

In your HDV timeline, select all and copy. Put the footage in a newly created DV sequence. Change the pixel aspect ratio to square and checkmark the anamorphic 16:9 box in the sequence settings. Down the bottom of the sequence settings, click Advanced under the compressor settings and change it from 4:3 to 16:9. Close out the sequence settings.

You'll see the red line in the timeline indicating you have to render, and the footage in your canvas will look scrunched. Don't worry about that, you won't actually be using this timeline for anything.

Set an In point at the beginning of your footage and an Out point at the end. Go to File>>Export>>Quicktime Movie. Make sure Current Settings and Make Movie Self-Contained are selected. Export the movie to a selected spot on your hard drive. This is the file you'll bring into DVD Studio Pro.

Take a deep breath.

Open DVD Studio Pro and import the footage. After you create your menu and associate your Track to it, click on the Graphical tab (in the window where it has Menu, Slideshow, Viewer, and Graphical tabs). Click on the Track icon. Now, in the Inspector window, set the Display Mode to 16:9 letterbox. Go back to the Viewer tab, click the Settings drop down menu and select Rectangular pixels. When you view the footage by playing the track or using Simulate, the footage will appear to be streched vertically a little bit (people will appear a little taller and skinnier than normal). Don't panic. Go to your DVD Studio Pro>>Preferences>>Encoding>>MPEG-2 SD window and setting your encoding preferences to 4:3 aspect ratio, Field Order: Auto, Mode: One Pass (if your project is less than an hour) Two Pass VBR (if your project is more than an hour)and Bit Rate and Max Bit Rate around 6.8. Motion Estimation: Best. Burn your DVD (or Build/Build and Format, whatever your choice)

When you play it back on a standard DVD player and regular TV the aspect ratio of the footage will be correct and letterboxed. On an HDTV it should fill the entire space with no letterboxing. If the aspect ratio looks correct when you Simulate, it will looked slightly scrunched vertically on a regular TV (people will look a little shorter and stockier. Not really sure why, but it does that.)

Good luck.