16:9, but Do NOT want letterbox for HDTV

First of all, check your TV display settings to see that they are appropriate,

Assuming they are: If you bring a 16:9 HD file into Compressor with a SD DVD predet, it will recognize the aspect ratio and automatically choose an anamorphic setting to fit it to SD. You don't have to do anything else. In DVDSP general preferenecs, tracks should be set to 16:9 letterbox.

Now, if you're down-rezing in FCP (rather than scaling in Compressor), you would set an anamorphic checkbox in your sequence. If exporting the HD resolution, don't do anything…export current settings.

Good luck.

Russ

Andy, Glad you were able to correct the aspect ratio problem.

But I wouldn't give up on producing a better quality image. Yes, SD DVD is far more compressed than your beautiful HD movies…but it is possible to make DVD's that look very good (definitely not crap quality).

Much depends on the camera, lighting, camera moves, and the content…which is why encoding for great looking disks can be a kind of trial and error process. One suggestion is to do some tests with small, but challenging sections of your movies. Make no-menu DVD builds in DVDSP and check them in Mac's DVD Player for comparative quality. (Even better, use a DVD-RW and evaluate the results on your TV.) Make Frame Controls active and experiment with the settings…for example, set the Resize filter to better and then best to see how much difference it makes. Or test whether first down-scaling to SD and then encoding to MPEG-2 in two separate steps produces improved results.

Again, good luck.

Russ

How is your dvd player connected to your television? Component or HDMI is the way to go. Any other way will degrade the quality. And the television should then recognize the aspect ratio and adjustt automatically.