What settings would you use?

[jeepsterryan]

I will admit to being somewhat of a rookie, but I recently upgraded to an hvx200 from an fx1. This is more camera than I am used too, but I bought it to increase the quality of our productions and am eager to learn how to get the most out of it. So, here is the the scenario:

We shoot strictly exercise videos for a company that streams them over the net to a set top box for output on a television. The boxes currently only output in 4:3 SD. The company well sell the footage to encodes it to h.264. But, we own the footage and will likely have other future outlets that might include internet streaming, DVD, and broadcast.

Now the questions.

Considering the possible future uses for the footage, what format would you shoot in to have the most flexibility while still giving the best possible quality to our current client?

We are shooting the footage using "letterbox" mode on the camear right now. We do it because the boxes will only stream 4:3 and it is one less step in post. Should we continue in this mode, or should we shoote in 16:9 (for archiving) and output convert the footage to letterbox in premiere when we edit?

Thanks in advance for any input. Here are some other details about our setup that may be relevant:

NLE: Premiere Pro CS3
Camera: Panasonic HVX200
Capture method: removeable hard drives via Adobe On Location

 

[John Froton]

I think the first thing to clarify would be to find out what the box will display if you send it anamorphic widescreen video. If it displays it in the same fashion that it displays letterboxed video, like most DVD players will do on a standard 4:3 TV, then why not shoot true widescreen with an HD format?

My inclination would be to shoot in DVCPro HD widescreen if at all possible for the reasons of future uses of the footage that you listed.

Edit - If the set top box can not accept anything other than 4:3, I would recommend that you shoot 16:9 and render out 4:3 video from an HD timeline rather than shoot 4:3 - simply because you'll want it for DVD and future longevity on what will be predominately widescreen displays as 4:3 displays die out.

 

[heavyG]

I shoot video for the internet - cooking, beer, wine, etc - and it is seen on a number of different webpages with differing delivery formats, as well as on transit buses / platforms, and soon to be streamed to set top boxes as well.

It is a post production compressor nightmare keeping track of who needs what deliverables. Since I own the content, and don't know what format I may need to deliver in a year from now, or 5 or 10; I chose to shoot 1080p and deal with any issues now rather than have less than desirable content format down the road.

The compression and post delivery problem isn't that bad when I know that I can output to any know configuration (even pan & scan 4:3 if needed).

G.