720P or 1080i?

[MikeyP]

Shooting Saturday for a corporate client. I suggested we shoot in HD (they just wanted to SD). I've shot both before, but when I asked for which format of HD they said you choose. This is for a corporate office of a major retailer. I can do either, and understand the benefits of each.... what are your thoughts?

[Cranky]

720p: scale and interlace. 720 lines into 240 lines.
1080i: deinterlace, scale and interlace. 540 lines into 240 lines.

I would prefer 720p.

[Barry_Green]

If all they want is SD, why not give 'em some 4:2:2 SD with DVCPRO50? It'll look great and be a lot faster to edit.

If they're primarily interested in SD distribution and you want to do HD, then I totally agree with Cranky on this one: 720p downconverts to 480i/p a lot better than 1080i does.

[David Jimerson]

Shooting Saturday for a corporate client. I suggested we shoot in HD (they just wanted to SD). I've shot both before, but when I asked for which format of HD they said you choose. This is for a corporate office of a major retailer. I can do either, and understand the benefits of each.... what are your thoughts?

How are they going to use it? Web? DVD? What all will it entail?

[MikeyP]

Believe it or not... they are holding a seminar at a local retailer and the corp. office in Idaho has never seen it. They just wanted someone to go shoot it. The mall management is a client of mine, and said I was the guy to call. I suggested I could shoot it in HD to "future proof" the footage in case they should ever want to do something with it [and to warrant the price Im charging them]. I got them to pop for a portable usb hard drive to deliver the footage on (assuming post if ever, locally in Idaho). Im providing a window dub SD DVD....thats the deliverable!

My initial thoughts wer 720PN just due to storage space on card, just as many have suggested. Sometimes you can out-think yourself, thanks for the confirmation!