How good will HD footage look on SD-DVD
 

Hello:

How big of a difference are camcorders like the JVC gy-hd100a, HVX 200, Canon xl h1 from a camcorders like the DVX100 when both footage is burned into SD-DVD - would it be a gigantic difference? Would there be any difference in watching them on a big screen because of resolution? Would HD look a lot better the SD when transferred to film? Would HD look a lot better then SD if printed to a DV tape? I ask this because i am wondering how are people taking advantage of shooting in a HD format when HD-DVD's, Blue Ray have not quite arrived yet. Basically to notice a huge difference between SD camcorders, HD camcorders would you have to have a HD player, projector? Would shooting on a HD camcorder vs SD Camcorder look similar when burned to a SD-DVD because of the SD-DVD's limitations.

If someone could shed some light to on this subject i would be grateful.

These has been considerable (understatement) discussion on this so it would be worth you searching the forums. Many people including myself believe that SD DVD-mpeg from an HDV source can exceed the quality of the equivalent material from the high-end DV camcorders you mention. The basic argument being more pixels for the mpeg encoder to work with.

However, it depends a lot on the workflow used, and there's extensive discussion on that too. Try a search on "SD" "HD" "workflow" and/or "downconvert".

To answer your specific questions:

Better when converted to film? DEFINITELY!!

Better when converted to SD DVD? Probably a bit better but not a *huge* difference.

Better when converted to DV tape? Minimual difference I'd expect, since you are clobbering the HDV footage with a 1:5 compression DV-codec conversion on top of the loss in resolution, which will essentially leach all the extra goodness out of it.

Probably the biggest difference is going to be:
A- The cameras. The HD cameras have different strengths and weaknesses. Some of them have newer features not available on older cameras.
B- HD is good for VFX type shots (versus SD). Greenscreen, camera stabilization, punch-ins (reframe in post), etc.

One of the big advantages to shooting in HD is that it yields better widescreen SD output than most DV cameras, which are typically designed to shoot 4:3 video. This widescreen quality difference is noticeable on a decent HDTV, and gives us a limited way to take advantage of HD now. Of course if you're comparing downsampled HD to true widescreen SD from those few DV cameras with widescreen sensors, then the difference would be less noticeable. But then those SD cameras still can't shoot HD for when HD delivery options are more commonplace, so in the end HD recording just makes sense as we head into the HDTV era.