New HD 40 Old GL1 and GL2 Mix video?
 

Anyone with patience out there?

I've been using two GL2 cams and one GL1 cam for years now. I have just bought a HV 40 to ease into HD.

I know that HD video as a source converted to SD can be, and normally is, much better than just using a SD file from an SD camera. I've tried taking a HD file from my HD 40 and using that file in SD editing software. It works, however, the video from my GL2 looks better than the converted HD 40 video. I'm talking about sharpness and the appearance of a higher resolution picture.

I have been told that I should use the HD video in editing and then at the very end of the process convert the whole project to SD. Is this the only way to get great SD video from a HD file?? Suggestions?

I did a search throughout the forum and nothing I found helped.
Any ideas?

Hooray! :) I get to answer my own question(s). I'll do this just in case there are any other SD to HD stragglers out there who might be wondering the same thing as me.

I found a solution. I tried converting the 1080i HD mpeg.4 files from my HV 40 to every format known to man that would open in Adobe Premiere. Most of the more common ones looked terrible. However, the best looking one of all, and very satisfactory, I might add, was good old mpg.2 I just didn't know that till I tried it.

Solution found. :)

MPEG-4?? From HV-40??
 

I keep trying to figure out how did you even get the MPEG-4 files from HV-40? The native codec on the HDV standard is MPEG-2. All you would normally need to do is capture the video using any capturing software (including Adobe Premiere), and it would come down in whatever container the capturing software uses (QuickTime MOV, AVI, MPG, MKV, whatever), with video encoded in MPEG-2 and audio encoded in whatever the camcorder uses (likely AC3). If your editing software can handle the files from your capturing software (in cases where these two are not the same tool), you should have the pristine, original HD video, as recorded by your camcorder.

Since you are using Adobe Premiere, all you need to do is capture the footage directly into Premiere and it will be easily editable right there. I believe Premiere uses QuickTime as the container on Macs, and AVI as the container on Windows. Bottom line, there should be no need for any format conversion (and therefore, generational loss).

Thanks for your reply. Well, I guess this just shows how little I really know about different formats. I can not tell you how in the world I came up with mpeg4....... must have read it somewhere.
I simply could not open the HD files in Adobe....... it gave me some error message about not being compatible. Then I set it (settings in Adobe) on 1080i 30fps and it worked. Then it was HD and i could not mix my SD video with it....... So the next best thing I decided to do was to download the HD capture to SD.......Then edit it with my SD........
I've sure got a lot to learn.....

As far as I know, the HV40 shoots HDV just as the HV 20 does. (I have an HV 20). You only get mpeg4 when using AVCHD cams.

Before I converted completely to shooting HD, I was mixing HDV with SD/DV and editing with PPRo CS3 (and then CS4). I mostly do multi-cam shoots of weddings and stage performances/recitals. I was shooting the SD with Sony VX2000s which produced SD footage rather similar to what you get from the GL1. I shot the SD footage in widescreen to match the screen shape of the HDV footage from an HV20, XHA1 and a Sony HDRHC1. I also tried shooting SD in 4:3 and having premiere or Cineform extract (center cut) out of the SD 4:3. .

Basically, I would capture all the footage in its native resolution, then set up an SD-widescreen Premiere timeline/sequence, and imported the footage. With CS3 and CS4, it all mixed down pretty well to a widescreen DVD. I found Cineform conversions helped the editing speed along but were not always necessary. One thing I did find (until I went to totally tapeless recording methods) was that HDV flummoxed audio-video synch with capturing in CS3. I had better luck capturing through HDVSplit (free download) and/or Cineform's HD Link and then importing the footage into PPro.