Novice question about using HD for SD

TGS wrote on 12/24/2007, 12:36 PM

I'm tempted into picking up something like a Canon HV20 to use for my purposes. Mainly, unmanned camera recording that I can 'Zoom & Pan' afterwards
My output will end up still being SD video. My question is:
Is it better to 'Zoom & Pan' using HD in the timeline, then down-convert it to SD or should it be down-converted to SD from the camera first before editing?
If I should work with HD, how difficult is working with HD in timeline. I have a dual core AMD 4200
I will be using a lot of Panning & Zooming so, ultimately I want the method that will give me better resolution for SD output.
Thanks in advance

Comments

mdopp wrote on 12/24/2007, 12:48 PM

You will want to set up a HD-project in order to preserve the original quality. Then zoom and pan as you like. Finally render to SD.

One more thing: Both HDV and SD are interlaced formats. However when zooming and panning, there will not be a direct relation between the upper and lower fields of either format.
Therefore, I recommend to set up the HD-project as 60 fps (double-NTSC), progressive (non-interlaced). Try using Mike Crash's "smart deinterlace" filter on all of your HD-material as this will give you much better results than the built in deinterlacers (http://www.mikecrash.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=6).

Finally render out to standard SD (interlaced) format.

Good luck.
Martin

TGS wrote on 12/24/2007, 8:45 PM

Thanks you for that information. Sounds like I have another learning curve to deal with.

Anybody else? The Canon HV20 is probably what I'll go with.
If anybody actually uses this camera with Vegas and can comment, I'd feel very grateful.
I am ignorant about HDV, but my SD camera is about to die and my imagination has taken off.
Can you tell me how hard it is to view effects and transitions while watching from the timeline of a dual core computer? How tough it is to get the sound sync'd when video is very choppy? What happens if you stack more than one HD video and try to watch it from the timeline? Do you always have to pre-render everything to see it?
Is rendering to SD a problem in any way?

Will progressive work in all DVD players? Or is this only a newer feature for DVD players that have this ability. All my current DVD players are at least 5 years old.

I appreciate all answers on this.

PS: I found a Canon HV20 on sale, Brand new, for $449. What's the catch? It's from "BestPriceCamerasDotCom" This is about $200 or more cheaper than most places. The customer reviews seem favorable. But that price gives me the "To good to be true" willies. (They had 5 tiers of ways you could order this, the very next tier is $659. and all I see offered is accessories I don't need, like Tri-pod, Case, Battery, UV filter, LCD screen protectors, 5 tapes, Head cleaner. Okay, I could use a battery, but not for another $210) If anybody has heard of these guys and can say something about the way they do business, that would be nice too.

Tim L wrote on 12/24/2007, 10:51 PM

PS: I found a Canon HV20 on sale, Brand new, for $449. What's the catch? It's from "BestPriceCamerasDotCom"

Check here: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Best_Price_Cameras_6

For "Overall Customer Satisfaction", on a scale of 0 to 10, they rate 0.13 for the past 6 months. (0.22 lifetime rating).

Tim L

TGS wrote on 12/24/2007, 11:52 PM

Thank you so much for that. Although, I was already not going to do anything until I found out about them.
They must have written their own reviews about themselves.
Well, I checked the other store that had a low price: EXPECAM and they had terrible ratings and complaints too.
It's too bad Google doesn't automatically pull up that resellerratings site at the same time, when you request the best price for something.
Thanks again.....
EDIT---I just retraced my steps. First, I googled 'Canon HV20 best price' and 'ShopCartUSADotCom is the 2nd entry on the google page. When you get to the ShopCartUSA page, they list 9 stores and the various prices which range from $449 to $849. They give every store 4 to 5 star ratings and list supposedly thousands of reviews for each store (this is where I read about BestPriceCameras ratings) Well, I checked each of these stores with resellerratings and all of them had less than a 1 rating and everybody complaining is "EXTREMELY DISSATISFIED".
These are the stores, which all who complained at resellerratings, says to avoid like the plague:
BroadwayPhoto - Camera Addict dot com - 1 Way Photo - Express Cameras - Best Price Cameras - EXPECAM - Lenses n' More - expo cameras - Foto Connection
Every one of those were highly rated by ShopCartUSADotCom with thousands of reviews to read if you wanted.