yet another hdv/sd thread
 

sorry for not just reading tons of old threads but i'm sort of in a hurry here..
this thursday we're shooting a video for a 72hr film noir contest. the first video we shot on this camera we used the B&W preset from this site, and it worked great. but post took a lot longer than usual because of all the hdv related headaches.. especially exporting etc. Considering this is a 72hr contest we dont have a lot of time to deal with these issues so we were just going to shoot SD.. but i'm wondering which you think would be better.. shoot hdv and use the in-camera hd to sd conversion durring capture, or to just shoot in sd to begin with? i realise that the hd to sd conversion is not the best quality option but is it going to be worse than shooting sd to begin with? i wouldnt mind having the hdv source material so that i can do a higher quality edit at a later date..
thanks
-dave

You forgot to mention what software you will be using to edit and what format the final video will be distributed on (DVD, web, etc.). The final distribution format will inform your decision to shot HDV or SD. If you are distributing the video in SD and have no plans or need for an HD version then I would shoot SD and not bother with any form of down-conversion.

The newest updated version of Final Cut (5.1.4) handles HDV very well. Final Cut 5.1.4 allows one to capture and edit HDV files without having to transcode. If you have not worked with HDV footage before, and time is of the essence, then you might do better shooting in SD, editing in SD and outputting to SD. The advantage to using HDV is that you can always down-convert in post to SD. Personally I would trust Compressor more than my XH-A1 to down-convert my HDV footage.

Hope this helps,
Hugh

That would answer the question for me then: record everything in HDV but capture as widescreen DV using the in-camera downconvert. This isn't the best way to downconvert but should be functional: I've done this for several projects with my FX1's.

By the way, with proper gear and experience you can potentially do a fast edit in HDV for anything which doesn't involve too many layers, but it sounds like you're best to stay away from that for now if you're not sure about the workflow.

thanks for the replies. i'm editing on premiere pro 2.0, which isnt so great for hdv. my cineform trial just expired too.. i used it on the last project i just did and the EDITING process wasnt too much slower, but it took quite awhile longer to capture, and then premiere would mess up every hour or two and i had to restart the program or even the computer.. and exporting was a nightmare.
for this particular 72hr contest we just need to deliver a .mov on a dvd. so it COULD be hd resolution i suppose.
but my real question is if shooting in hdv and then using in-camera conversion to sd will look worse than just shooting on sd..
thanks

I did some tests when I bought my FX1 and didn't see any glaring problems downconverting HDV to DV versus shooting in DV in the first place. I'm tempted to say the downconverted HDV looks slightly better, but it's basically a draw.

If you wanted to be really clever you could record HDV to tape while simultaneously recording DV on a Firestore drive, then use the Firestore for your quick edit while keeping the tape for a future HD edit. I've done this too and it works.