Importing 720p video looks bad

      once the video has been transcoded it looks deinterlaced




Please explain.
DeInterlaced = Progressive Scan = better than interlaced.
720p should never be interlaced anyway, as it's a progressive stream type (it's
what the little "p" stands for)

Sounds to me as if you have field order issues somewhere along the line?
What is the source? Interlaced? Progressive? Resolution?
If Encore is trying to transcode the file, it means your M2V is non compliant in
some way. Also, a QT Ref file is not an MPEG-2, so must be transcoded. Are you
feeding it QT Ref, M2V or what?

Neil - Yes it should be progressive, the job in 720p/59.94, so I don't know why
it's looking as if it's now interlaced, and looking bad as a result. For
example, on diagonal lines I'm getting tons of jaggies.

And since my source is progressive, field order wouldn't apply.

Resolution is 1280x720, 59.94 frame rate.

I've tried supplying it a M2V from Sorensen Squeeze 5.0, so it should be
compliant. I know a QT ref file would need to be transcoded, but it wants to
transcode my M2V's so during all this trial and error I thought I'd send it QT
Refs since those render so fast. The only file type I've been able to bring in
that it does want to transcode is an AC3 file.

One thing is not clear to me- are you building a Blu-ray project, or DVD?