Video Mix Tape - Working Process Ideas Wanted

[none295]

As a fan of video mix tapes, I had been tempted to create one myself. After creating one, i'm contemplating adding additional material to the DVD and am looking for suggestions on the working process. What is the best way to maintain the original sourced materials quality/presentation, but while also making the work flow fairly simple, since the number of sources can make the process time consuming. Automation of conversion is preferred over having to deal with individual clip idiosyncracies.

The way I worked previously was to convert all material to 720x480 @ 30fps. (using iMovie) The positive side of this, was that 24/25/etc fps material didn't loose frames but gained. The downside was most material got the aspect ratio changed to fit the 720x480. Although changing the AR helps make the overall presentation more coherent, but as i continue in this line, i'd like to maintain more of the materials original presentation. What automated options are there to resize media to fit the 720x480 format, with black bars added where required?

Also first time around didn't pay a lot of attention to the audio levels. Only where it was extremely out of the norm or unsynced did I go back and correct. Is there an easy batch system to normalize audio levels?

Maybe i'm approaching this backwards, is there a way to keep the original materials source encodes, and the DVD on the fly would change shape to fit accordingly?

If anyone else has gone through the process of working with a large/varied sample source, would like to hear other working systems or steps which were time savers in the short or long run.

thank in advance
none295

[lordsmurf]

It's still 4:3 or 16:9, regardless of PAL or NTSC.