Downconverting HD to SD

I've been reading forums all day and just can't figure out the best settings I should use when downconverting my 1080i 1440x1080 HDV footage down to 720x486 SD to mix into a SD sequence in FCP. I've tried compressor and keep getting horrible results. what are the best settings to use in compressor for this? Should I export as a mpeg2? or use the uncompressed 8bit preset? Or what?
I've also tried creating a SD sequence and dropping my HDV footage into it and letting FCP do the work, it looks horrible. The best one I have so far is to export my HDV footage out as a uncompressed quicktime, import it back into FCP and then drop it into my SD sequence. Theres got to be something better.
I've read a lot about using Hardware, but I don't have any of that and would like to stick with FCP and compressor if possible. I've also looked into using Mpeg streamclip to resize it, but I just don't know what all to do.
Someone help, please!
Thanks!

If you're using Compressor, you'll probably get better results if you turn Deinterlacing on, set to Better, under Frame Controls in the settings. Quick scaling of interlaced footage generally looks bad. Pictures will help to specify just what kind of "bad" you're seeing now.

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    Hey Jx,
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    Sounds like the right way to go; rendering shouldn't take that long since you have already downconverted.
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    If your final output is SD, I would set the camcorder to downconvert to DV and capture the footage as DV. Then you don't need to worry about the whole HD->SD thing anymore and things will happen much faster.
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  • Best compressor settings for HDV downconvert -- attention hanumang

    Reposting this bit because it differs significantly from topic of thread where it appeared.
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    By coincidence I decided to try the initial conversion (HDV to 10-bit) this morning on compressor (but I didn't change the frame rate; i didn't know they were relavant for HD downconvert; I only been change them for the PAL-NTSC conversion).
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    My bad, I was out in the afternoon and didn't get a chance to pick up on your reply to the last thread. Sorry to hear that your first attempt with Compressor was so disappointing.
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