dear Barry

[Alvise Tedesco]

And all of you more experienced than me, need help, please..

Planning to shoot a Doc. in June. Budget too tight to use higher end cam. I'm asking myself if I can achieve better photography with an HVX in dv50 instead of dv25 from my DVX. Easily one can say yes, for the better color space/compression.
Here's the wrong side: I want 16/9, but release will be (broadcast, not dvd) 4/3 standard definition.
So,
Shoot anamorphic, edit anamorphic, and before going to tape, downscale and letterbox?
Isn't downscaling degrading so much that is maybe better to directly letterbox my DVX?
Shoot HVX letterbox?
Isn't then an absolute no-more wide angle lens, extracting the middle portion from the ccd?

Thanks.

p.s. Is my english good enough to understand 90% of your (Barry) HVX guide? Who knows? Is it easy as, for example, Paul wheeler's "Digital cinematography"?

[Barry_Green]

If you're releasing on 4:3, why shoot on 16:9? Why not just use your DVX in letterbox mode (or letterbox in post)?

Yes the HVX will be better, but it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to and expense to incur when you already have a DVX on hand.

If you were releasing in 16:9 I'd say no question the HVX is better, but in 4:3 mode it's not going to be so significantly different that it'd justify spending a lot of money to use something other than what you already have, I think.

[Jarred Land]

shoot 16:9 but frame for 4:3. TV release can be 4:3 by just chopping off the sides. Thats how they shoot TV nowadays.

[Alvise Tedesco]

Thank you both.
One more question.
dv50 definitely doesn't help me, since I need to achieve widescreen look, but release is 4/3, meaning I would use only the middle part of the ccd and then loosing another 25% adding bars on top and bottom..
I shot some clip (same subject) in dv50/dv100 on hvx and dv on my dvx.
Then compressed to mpeg2.
It looks like hd 1080i downconverted on fcp clearly lost his crispness, but also lost the typical harshness of dv. Definitely something new to my eyes from a small camera. Pretty unusable at this stage, but what if I shoot and edit 1080i25p and only later, with my finished project I downconvert with AJA or Blackmagic to digibeta or similar sd?
Thanks again
Alvise