This inquiry is a continuation of my journey in seeking alternatives to Premier Pro especially in the areas of downsizing from HDV footage and encoding.

1) Upfront: in your considered view and from you own personal experience, assuming very similiar settings, does HC encoder yield better output after encoding SD NTSC 16 9 ( presumably BFF + interlaced) files as directly compared to Premiere Pro?

2) Would I obtain more quality if I feed HC Enc a customized/optimized Avisynth file as opposed to just opening an. avi file?

3) What happened(s) to the audio component as I input a file with audio?

4) Specifically: As far as settings goes, please I value your sage advice, what should I be picking here:

Main tab:

a) Is it acceptable/recommended to selcet dc 9 or 10 over 8? What's "right"?
b) Interlaced: yes or no?

Settings I tab:

a) Interlacing: what choice is most suitable?
b) Same goes for chroma downsampling!
c) Is quality (in regards to definition/clarity and sharpness) lost if I choose progressive over interlaced?

Settings III tab:

a) Must chroma output be 4:2:0/YV12 since the end delivery is MPEG-2 spec on dvd?

What are your thoughts in chosing FOX 1 as the go to matrix? Should something else be picked?

Really appreciate your help.

Thank you