My HD footage is too high quality for a large segment of my intended audience! What to do?
After filming HD on a little Panasonic TM300 I have edited some short films in Premiere Pro that I have output in HD format and uploaded here on Youtube. Everybody is quite satisfied with the result.
However audience access to the films is becoming a problem as here in west Africa many people do not have access to high speed internet (though many do) and also many people (including my partners) do not have fancy laptops - so playing back DVD copies of the the videos on laptops is a problem. First, since most laptops are too slow, hard drives are too small, and DVD players are also too slow; second, since many laptops run on older operating systems that cannot playback HD unless the user first installs an extra program such as VLC media player, which not everybody has patience and technical skill to do. Third, many DVD players are older machines that do not playback HD.
As far as I can see to get around this problem I have the following options that have pluses and minuses:
(1) swap cameras and record in miniDV format. This would give me lower quality results yetl immediately resolve most problems mentioned above with local access at least in terms of compatability with older laptop and DVD players but may hurt prospects for circulation in Europe, USA and elsewhere if not now then certainly in future. Or do a lot of you guys who do semipro stuff like this still shoot miniDV and expect to continue to do so in future?
(2) continue to record in AVCHD but export from Premiere Pro in a different format? Which format? Do not most options for exporting AVCHD in alternative formats look really crappy?
(3) ?????????
After filming HD on a little Panasonic TM300 I have edited some short films in Premiere Pro that I have output in HD format and uploaded here on Youtube. Everybody is quite satisfied with the result.
However audience access to the films is becoming a problem as here in west Africa many people do not have access to high speed internet (though many do) and also many people (including my partners) do not have fancy laptops - so playing back DVD copies of the the videos on laptops is a problem. First, since most laptops are too slow, hard drives are too small, and DVD players are also too slow; second, since many laptops run on older operating systems that cannot playback HD unless the user first installs an extra program such as VLC media player, which not everybody has patience and technical skill to do. Third, many DVD players are older machines that do not playback HD.
As far as I can see to get around this problem I have the following options that have pluses and minuses:
(1) swap cameras and record in miniDV format. This would give me lower quality results yetl immediately resolve most problems mentioned above with local access at least in terms of compatability with older laptop and DVD players but may hurt prospects for circulation in Europe, USA and elsewhere if not now then certainly in future. Or do a lot of you guys who do semipro stuff like this still shoot miniDV and expect to continue to do so in future?
(2) continue to record in AVCHD but export from Premiere Pro in a different format? Which format? Do not most options for exporting AVCHD in alternative formats look really crappy?
(3) ?????????
