Shake + HDV...
 

Would the 2 work well for a "first" film (by first I mean your very first full-length film)? Example: Shoot in 50i, motion adaptive de-interlace, make 25p into 24p, import in Shake, Compose, Export as 24psf HDCAM.

General discussion on the Shake + HDV interaction is welcome.

Are you talking about for editing or for special effects? Or possibly for color grading?

-Eric

^Special effects, cause it's with a blue/green screen.

Hey Jack,
It will work and pull an alright key if shot correctly. The problems you'll run into are compression artifacts and colorspace limitations. Which camera are you thinking of shooting on? The HDV codec may be the same but the results vary greatly depending on the camera you use. Shooting interlaced (50i) makes things much much worse because the entire frame is compressed and you end up with compression artifacts over interlacing artifacts. Even if you deinterlace, this problem won't be solved. In fact in my tests with the sony FX-1 I could pull a better key with the interlaced footage than processed de-interlaced footage. If at all possible shoot with a progressive scan camera, even more than that try to capture uncompressed.

One last option is to shoot in HDV and downconvert to uncompressed SD inside of shake. This will give you much better colorspace and help solve a lot of the HDV compression artifacts. Try down-converting then pulling a key as well as pulling a key then down-converting. See what works best for you.

My 2 c,
Eric James

But if you're forced to export HD 1080p24, then what do you do?

Hey Jack,
What camera will you be using? This will help me help you.

I would suggest just giving is a shot. You can download the demo version of shake from apple. Try shooting some greenscreen footage and playing with different methods. See what you like the best.

Thanks,
Eric James