Ok people I own Final Cut pro. I import my p2 files and export as quicktime and simply drag and drop to toast. Am I doing it wrong? The dvd looks ok but i have a feeling it could look better. And does compressor make the 720 look better then your standard sd footage? I have seen a demo of the HVX200 and the footage looked extremely clean. I am trying to obtain the same quality.
thanks
With MPEG2 compression it's all about how much control you have over the compression. Compressor offers a relatively straightforward interface for adjusting bitrate and choosing interlace options, etc. I believe Toast also allows you to tweak its compression settings but I've never tried.
Other than ability to control your compression settings, the next question is which piece of software achieves a better look when doing the compression? You can only answer that by feeding the same piece of video to both applications, making sure the compression settings match and comparing the end result.
Assuming all the footage you want on the DVD will fit at this bitrate, I recommend trying 6.5 or 7Mbps. You can go higher, of course, but this seems to be a good tradeoff between file size and image quality IMO.