operaguy--

thanks for the kind words on my earlier posts...

On this point: "Is it most appropriate for an indie artist to turn the master folder of lossless TIFF or PNG images over to a pro house at that point and let them DVD-up? Or...what is your recommendation for video editing software?"

In my limited experience, I have achieved the best picture quality results for DVD by using one of two approaches, depending on whether I need to convert my individual frames to an AVI stream along the way:

Approach 1
a. Render individual frames as PSD files in 640x480x72ppi

b. (optional step:) process as needed in Photoshop using batch automation

c. Import image sequence into Quicktime Pro 6 and save as self-contained .MOV

d. Import .MOV file into Ulead Movie Factory 2 (one of the few DVD authoring programs I've found which import MOV files and which I could afford)

Approach 2 (if working with an AVI file):
use TMPGEnc to encode MPEG-2 file from AVI then import to DVD Authoring program. TMPGEnc is the best MPEG-2 encoder I've found, and it is significantly better graphics quality than native encoders packaged with Ulead MF2, DVD Complete (which became DVD X Maker then disappeared when 321 Studios folded), and MyDVD. These are the only DVD Authoring programs I have. Perhaps Adobe Premiere or some other program has a native encoder as good as or better than TMPGEnc but I have never tried these or any others besides the three programs I own.

When I got my license for it, TMPGEnc was only about $25-30 as I recall. When last I checked, you could download the free version and MPEG-2 encoding would work for about 11 days if you want to try it out.

Note: some might point to apparent inconsistency in my advice re Ulead MF2 encoding given that I use that program to import MOV files. For some reason, 640x480 Poser-based MOV files look great when imported to Ulead MF2 whereas MF2 does a much poorer job importing and encoding 720x480 DVD-compliant AVI streams. I don't know why.

Again, good luck with the project.... cheers