1080 and 720 question

[sodotoguwangus]

I'm planning on shooting a short film soon with my Panasonic HVX200, and I want to use the 1080/24pa setting for the highest quality HD recording. However, slo-mo can only be achieved in 720pn, and several of my shots require slo-mo.

My question is:

Is it possible to mix 720/24pn and 1080/24pa footage in the same project? (I suppose this depends on the software, but in general can it be done?).

Also, if I mix 1080/24pa and 720/24pn footage, will the two clash? In other words, will it be obvious which shots are done in 1080 and which are 720, or will they blend together well?

Thanks.

[Geoff_R]

In FCP there are a couple of ways to integrate 720 and 1080 footage. What's your post software you'll be using?

Will they clash? Now that depends on what your audience is viewing the final product. Obviously one won't be able to tell watching it online, through regular DVD, or any kind of SD platform. On HD-DVD, probably not since HD-DVD is limited to 720 lines of rez. With Blue-Ray on a 1080p TV, possibly... but from what I've read regarding film outs, both the 720 and 1080 footage looks damn good and unless you're sitting in the first five rows, it's hard to tell the difference between the two. So they probably won't 'clash' to the degree where your movie is jeopardized. If non-film related people ARE noticing a difference between the two, that probably means they aren't paying enough attention to your story, which is a whole different problem itself.

[TedRR]

The other factor is that if you are using 720 only/mostly for slo-mo, it will be even less of an issue.

I'm far more likely to notice bad acting, storyline, shooting and editing then minor differences in "film stock".
Like Geoff said, make your movie the best you can and don't worry about the small stuff.

[telebay]

You may want to try to up rez to 1080 using Red Giant software's InstantHD.

[HVXguy]

Or just try a 150% scale on the 720 footage.
Do some testing. I just cut my demo to 720p
and we had 720 24pN, 720 30p and 1080 24p
It all looks great.