need a question answered before going hd
 

hey guys,
i need a little help here.
im planning a long term project with my spare time,
what little of it i have outside of the weddings, events, etc(bread & butter stuff).

anyway for this project to be able to withstand the test of time im going to have to shoot in hd(v) from the beginning.
but i want to, if possible, capture in standard footage, edit with standard footage and the hdv stuff left on the tape.
then, down the road, when the machines improve and everyone is watching hd stuff, id like to be able to re-capture the stuff in hd and as easily as possible, replace the shots on the timeline with the hd clips, and re-render.

so guys, is anyone here taking this approach to their work? is it the right approach? my current pc is dual core 2.4ghz with 2000(roughly) ram.
maybe id be better to do the whole project in hd from the beginning but please bear in mind it will be effects intense (ae) and render times are relevant.

so how difficult would it be to upgrade (i suppose would be the word) the projects.
i suppose ideally there would be timecode on the tape and this would make it all possible.
but i need to know what program allows this before i start (premeir pro 2?)

any help would be much appreciated as im a little bit scared of this transition.
im going from a "know a lot" to a "know very little".
thanks in advance.

Your system will handle HDV now, using one of many programs. I would simply edit, and finalize in HDV, then output to DV or SD using Vegas 7.

What kind of effects are you talking about ?

its hard to say at this early stage but id imagine
there'd be quite a bit of glows, blurs, rays, etc.
i might want to run a film look through it as well.
but the stuff that i do in aftereffects- wont it have to be a
much bigger composition to sit into the hd project?
i thought i heard that ae doesent allow hd stuff into it yet.
has that changed?

AE works with HD material.

2- Some NLEs let you re-capture material from tape based on timecode. I'm not sure which of the current NLEs will do it, because HDV re-capture is tricky. But it can be done. (My experience with this is with a Miranda box converting HDV to HD-SDI.)

But you will have a big issue with conforming your project for AE. You'll need to bring the HD footage in again, and scale everything for HD size. Not sure what the best process for that is. You also might get some software incompatibility issues if things change versions. version X projects don't always open in version Y.

scaling everything for hd size sounds tough. now there is an issue for adobe to get their heads around.

if ae could automatically do it on the timeline & composition window and maybe we could step in the make some tweaks.

anyway ill just have to bear it in mind and limit my keyframes.

thanks for the help.