Thanks to all for the good advice on using QT as an end product. I'll stick with authoring DVD's, but that brings up a couple of other issues for me that I'd like advice on.
I am using a Canon XH A1, shooting HDV at 24f. I currently have FC Express and iDVD, and the results I get are less than stunning! Without getting too technical at this point, would using FCS2 offer me significantly better quality, or just more features? My educational videos are of simple, outdoor narrative scenes, and I have little need for a lot of DVD extras.
Second, would using a hard drive capture like the Quickstream, which would enable me to transfer mpeg2 files directly to my computer hard drive, rather than using Apple Intermediate, be an advantage in terms of output quality? Or does it all get get compressed the same in the end?
Third, I've heard that using a Blackmagic Intensity card would change the HDV to an I-frame format. Is that true, would it be an improvement, and is there a way I could use it given that my Canon is not an HDMI camera?
Thanks very much,
Michael