Editing/Combining HD and SD
 

I am looking at getting a new HD cam quite soon. Im wondering how it works when editing HD with SD footage. My current cam is a DVX100, so if I do a two camera wedding, with one camera being that and the other an HD, what do people recomend? I would think it wouldnt look very good to have a 16x9 HD image, and then transistion to another image which is 4x3 and SD. Im sure it can be done to look decent, at least until i have enough dough to afford another HD cam. Thanks.

I'm guessing you are talking about delivering in SD. Probably best would be either to crop HD footage to 4:3 or just shoot 4:3 DV with the high def camera, to mix with footage from the DVX100.

No, im wondering about editing it in HD, with both HD and SD video.

As you surmised, it will look awful, constantly shifting back and forth between 16:9 and 4:3, and the resolution difference will be shocking.

Robert's solution about shooting in 4:3 SD with the HDV cam is the best, but I guess that defeats the purpose of having an HDV cam.

Can the DVX100 do 16x9? If so that should help somewhat to get the aspect ratios matched.

When you say "editing it in HD" - is this for final output in HD? If so, your SD stuff will need to be creatively posted, or it's going to look bad. BUT if you did some blurs/mist effects, went with B&W, etc, etc, you might be able to pull off the SD stuff in a pleasing way. Creativity in post counts!

I'm guessing that what you mean is that you want to have both HD and SD on the timeline, intermix and output to SD? THAT should work - a sharp eye will see that the SD footage isn't as sharp as the HD stuff, but it can be done... you'll find it very frustrating while editing, and trying to figure out how to buy HD cam #2 ASAP... but it can be done with "acceptable" results.

Color matching may be a big time consumer in edit, so beware of that as well!

Upscaling DV looks bad, no matter how you do it.
My preferred workflow is to work HD in HD, SD in SD. When I'm done editting, downscale the HD to SD and merge in an SD timeline.

Are you planning to deliver the final product in HD (on Blu-ray?), to your customers?