I'm not sure why I waited this long to try it but zooming in post with HD (editing HD rendering to widescreen SD) is hardly noticeable at 15-20% (very cool!!!) on my 25" monitor. To really test it though I need to burn it to DVD and test it on our 42" HDTV in the living room.
Can anyone tell me at what point the degradation starts getting noticeable going HD to SD before I do though?
Thanks very much,
Randy

GR it's indeterminable, it'll be different every time 'cause it depends on a number of factors, the original picture quality, the capture, the NLE, render program etc.

Shoot HD the best you can, then through to SD, concentrate on refining that process.
Cheers.

Yessir, after I wrote that post I tried it on the B cam footage (shot with an HV40) which was a wide shot of the whole stage and it didn't seem to work well at all.
That said I'm very pleased with what I was able to do (get a little tighter and follow the talent's movement).
I could never get away with that in SD (at least without it being noticeable).
Thanks guys,
Randy

If you have an HDV camera (not just the XH-A1 but, I think, all of them) then when you select to "shoot in SD" all you are really doing is down-converting the HD signal from the chips to an SD signal on the tape, so all the debates about high-frequency "twitter" and similar artifacts apply, just as they do when down-converting in an NLE. My opinion is that, so long as your editing machine can cope with either the large file size of intermediate codecs or the high CPU load of native MPEG2 editing, it's best to stay in HD until the very last moment, and archive the finished project in HD, too. Your NLE will do at least as good a job of down-converting as your camera.

There are some very good HD-SD converters on the market, but nothing that's remotely "affrodable" (from my point-of-view). AFAIK, the only things that do a proper job are dedicated hardware devices that only broadcast networks and the like can afford.

If your target output is always and only SD 4:3, then keep your trusty XL2, XM2 or PD170 going for as long as you can. If you sometimes need SD 16:9 or HD, get an XH-A1s and accept that you'll either have to live with a little twittering or spend mega-bucks on serious conversion hardware. (Until ProCoder manages to reverse engineer those patented Snell & Whatsit circuits!)

Yessir after some more research and testing I'm convinced you guys are right and I think I have finally shot the last 4:3 I'll ever need (I had to to match a project that started in 4:3) which was not easy to do when I wanted so badly to shoot HD!
Thanks guys,
Randy