SD/HD web production
 

I am a happy XL2 owner and recently caved into the craving of HD and bought a XH A1. Basically I am just a hobbiest and I love share my stuff on the net.

What do I need to know about HD that I don't have to deal with on SD? Also, I am wondering if anyone has tried to sinc the image up on an SD an HD camera for Web delivery?

Get great tapes. Don't have to be HDV tapes. People seem to have good luck with pro Sony tapes. I like the pro Panny's myself. Deviate from from HQ tapes at your own peril. You could be stuck in dropout-land.

Focus is critical. You can be a bit soft in SD and get away with it sometimes. HD is not that forgiving.

In post, you will need a lot more processing power to deal with the mpeg format. If you edit with an intermediate codec you'll need not as much more power but you'll make up for that with higher storage needs.

There's more but those are the big ones that jump out at me right now.

Huh? Do you mean match SD & HDV footage in the same project? Yep. Do that all the time. I just scale the SD footage up for HD or the reverse for SD projects. I just got Red Giant's Instant HD but haven't looked at it yet. I'm having too much fun with Magic Bullet Looks.

How does the "matched" footage look on the web. I am thinking that it will look fine? Whishful hoping maybe?

Two parts to that answer. Matching the colors between the GL2 and the A1 should not be a problem. On the other hand, up-scaling any DV footage to an HD frame size will be dependent upon what you use to do that. Premier does a barely fair job. I've heard tell of products that do such a magnificent job as to be nearly undetectable but I don't recall the name of the products.

Instant HD may be one of them, but I haven't tried it yet. I do know that it will only work on progressive footage, not interlaced.