To interlace or not to interlace...

I've got a project where I'm mixing HDV 720P and DVCAM 60i footage. I'm using ProRes as my timeline codec. My final destination is DVD. So to maintain the sharpest image for TV on DVD playback I'm wondering whether I should have interlacing on in Sequence Settings. I know that Compressor will interlace anyway as part of the DVD Best Quality transcode, so I'm wondering whether interlacing in my timeline is good or bad for my footage, particularly the progressive stuff. Or is the difference negligible? Any thoughts? Just to complicate matters I also have some HDV 1080i shots as well. They have the shift fields filter applied to modify from upper to lower.

joey848 wrote:
I know that Compressor will interlace anyway as part of the DVD Best Quality transcode
That's not actually correct. If your timeline is 23.976, Compressor will just leave it at 23.976 all the way through the MPEG-2 encoding process. You'll end up with 23.976 footage on your DVD, and the player itself — the actual piece of home-entertainment equipment — will be responsible for inserting pulldown if necessary.
The question you're asking isn't whether your timeline should be interlaced or not. The question you're asking is whether you should conform your 60i footage to 60p, or conform your 60p footage to 60i.
There's no easy answer in this case, because you're not just conforming timebases. You're also scaling. You're taking 720p60 and 1080i60 footage down to 480. That means you're going to be destroying any field structure in your HD footage anyway, by scaling it down.
Since none of your source footage is p24, it makes no sense to work at 23.976. Since DVD only supports 480p24 and 480i60, that leaves you with just one practical option.
So the bigger question becomes at what point you should conform everything to the same size and timebase. My gut tells me you're going to get the best results by running all your 720p60 and 1080i60 footage through Compressor, with frame controls on, and having it scale everything down to 480i. (You didn't say whether your finished product will be anamorphic or not; whether you go anamorphic or pan-and-scan to 4:3 or letterbox is up to you.)
You might try doing a test. Set your timeline to 480i60 (either anamorphic or not, depending on what you prefer) and drop in some 480i60, 720p60 and 1080i60 footage. Throw some transitions across cuts, whatever you think you're going to be using in your show. Render it all out to ProRes with your render settings set to best. Put it on DVD, see what you think of it. It might be entirely satisfactory.

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