HD Workflow

[JPproductions]

The scenario is this. I'm going to shoot a thirty minute show to play at museums, distribute to schools, and broadcast locally. I want to shoot it on 720/24p in letterbox with my shiny new HVX200. And record that on my nifty FS-100. And edit that with my upgraded Avid Studio HD. And then finally, output and distribute on my terrific . . .

Now I'm lost. What happens next? Downconvert? And how do you do that by the way? Rent a deck, or go to a transfer house, or . . .

I'm not even sure what questions to ask.

Any thoughts or explanations would be appreciated. I've read the forums, but still very confused.

[Jeff Brown]

To start off you won't be recording 720/24p in letterbox as it's native 16:9 to begin with.

Not sure what spec AVID HD is in regard to supporting that format - anyone else?

Once you've edited it you then export it as an SD project of what ever quality you disire (at this stage you would letterbox it if you're destination is 4:3 or pan and scan if necessary - but if that's the case why shoot 16:9 in the first place?)

Then you play out to tape/burn DVD etc depending on delivery format.

[SilverMotion]

JPproductions, it sounds like you want to both show it in HD and SD. To show it in HD (for the masses if you will) you only have a couple options. HD-DVD is here but VERY new and the truth is, no one has the players yet, even if they did you would need an authoring program and a very expensive burner. This also applies to Blu-ray.

"broadcast locally"... in HD? if so, you can bring a hard drive or data dvd to the station where they will transfer it to whatever they want.

"museums and schools" again, is going to be shown in HD? The only example I can draw on is a couple of my local cinemas that have been outfitted with HD projectors (digital video). They accept a direct connection from a computer (HDMI or DVI).

If you dont really need to show it in HD, then to downconvert to anamorphic 720x480 (resulting on playback as a 16x9 image) I should believe your avid can do this. Final Cut Pro does it fine. In this case of course, DVD is the standard to deliver, with only 30 mins to deliver you can keep the mpeg2 compression to a very nice looking minimum.

[JPproductions]

Thanks for the reply. I think I'll try silverMotion's suggestions, and make HD and SD versions. Some museums and schools might have HD ability and some might not but will have it in the not-so-distant-future. I just wanted to make sure everything was doable one way or the other.

You would think a harddrive or data DVD would work for broadcast. I'm glad to hear someone else say that.

I did want to shoot in 16x9 HD and have an SD letterbox version, which sounds like it's the right solution.