Blu-ray and the HVX200. Help!!

[Tim Carnie]

Greetings from Dubai... My name is Tim and I'm REALLY new to video production but I've spent the past year and half trying to bring myself as "up to speed" as possible. About a year ago I bought a Panasonic HVX 200 and I've been REALLY impressed with the camera. I'm running AVID liquid on a PC and I haven't been able to use the camera in "native" mode until recently. As I'm sure MOST HVX/AVID liquid users know, it's not possible to edit PAL HD in liquid but I THINK I've discovered a workaround and I'm posting here to see if this is an acceptable one. I recently purchased P2 Forge, which seems to convert the native MXF files to an AVI format I can use. I find only the uncompressed AVI files will open in After Effects. I bought a Blu-ray DVD burner this month and this week I took some native MXF's (24 fps) and imported them into a 1920 X 1080 after effects session (also 24 fps). I scaled them up to fit the screen and then mixed them down to an uncompressed Windows media file and then burned them on to a Blu-Ray disc. Unfortunately the clips I had on hand didn't have any audio on them so I'm not sure how the frame rate was affected. They look amazing and SEEM to be playing at the proper speed but I can't tell for sure without audio.

Here are my questions...

1) Is this an acceptable workaround?
2) Will 24 fps files play at the proper speed?
3) Are there any issues with regard to scaling it up in after effects.
4) Can you suggest which compression to use on the windows media files prior to burning on Blu-Ray.

I would appreciate ANY help you guys/chix can offer, whether it be answers to my questions or suggestions on ways I could do this better. Are there other camera formats/frame rates (remember I'm in PAL land) you'd recommend? Bascially I just want to be able to shoot in PAL HD and submit that to my clients on a Blu-Ray Disc so that they can watch in their office/home.

Thanks in advance...

Tim

[frezko]

To me it seems like a really acceptable method. And incredible process done by yourself. But I don't have that much of knowledge in this area, so I can't help you any further.

Completely off-topic, but are there any great filmschools in Dubai? I like the place and would love to visit it some day, and if there are some good schools, why not take a year there?

Thank you,
Fredrik

[Tim Carnie]

I've seen ads for new york film school but I don't know if you study locally or whether they ship you to new york to study. I DID notice they had an HVX 200 in their ad though.

[Barry_Green]

Was that the New York Film Academy? They bought something like 80+ HVX's at once. AFAIK, you fly there and attend a 4-week or 8-week course.