Downsampling HD footage to SD

[firmdragon]

Whats the best/easiest way to do it?  Preferably on a MAC (FCP5).

[taper420]

export as quicktime movie > settings DV NTSC 48kHz anamorphic

import and create sequence with these same settings > edit

[John Kary]

Whats the best/easiest way to do it?  Preferably on a MAC (FCP5).

Depends: what is your target destination?  HDV tape?  SD DVD?

I'll assume SD DVD.  You should be able to run it through Compressor or a similar MPEG2 encoder which does bubonic resizing.  I'm not familiar with the MPEG2 encoders on Mac but get and try as many as you can and compare results.

You could also try looking around on the FCP boards over at Creative Cow (http://forums.creativecow.net/index.html) or DVXUser (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/) and I'm sure you can find somebody who has encountered the same problem.