Greetings.

I may have an opportunity to shoot some video interviews for a client that is aware of my new-ness to video, but desire to jump in.

If I shoot video (HDV on say a Canon HV30) can that be downconverted to SD?

The final goal is a DVD, but I thought shooting HD would be best in case they wanted high def in the future.

I know that HD is 16:9, so on SD the choice would probably be to letterbox, or chop off the left and right sides of the video.

I will not be editing this, I think they have a post place handling that.

I just want to make sure I'm on the same page.

Jonathan

You can downconvert in most cameras, shooting HD is better in most cases, but you may want to double check with whoever will be posting it to see what they want. Save the conversion headaches...

And you can do SD widescreen, which is probably going to be the DVD delivery format/aspect ratio. 4:3 would be a bit unusual IMO, but you should check as it may affect your framing while shooting.