HDcam to HDV?

[macgregor]

Hello. We have shortfilm recorded in HDcam 25p.

The final film will need to be resized to PAL DigiBeta.

Now, in order to edit i could:

- Go to a production facility and pay €5,000 to edit it in a true HDcam video editing software...

- Or order a HDcam to HDV (1080i) conversion for €300. Quality will be of course much worse, but will this be really noticeable once we resize to PAL resolution? The footage contains very slow camera movements, so i guess there wont be motion artifacts in MPEG2.

Also, 1080 is interlaced, but since this was recordad on 25p, i guess this would work as the DVX100, recording progressive images into interlaced secuences.

Color resolution is half in HDV, but i understand that when we resize to PAL we have more or less the same color pixels, rigth?

The price difference is huge. What do you think?

 

[Spot]

First and foremost, Vegas IS an HDCAM editing software. You might not have the hardware to support it, but I edit 4:2:2 uncompressed HD at least every week.
Second, why not convert the media from HDCAM straight to CineForm intermediary, edit with that in Vegas, then using a tool like GearShift replace all CineForm with HDCAM for render, or simply do this manually?
finally, since you acquired at a high quality, low compression, you can bet that the 4:2:2 to 4:2:0 encode won't be nearly as bad as you think.
And if you're going to DB, you definitely won't know the diff.