HD To SD

[Walter Biscardi]

If your project is destined for SD, then shoot SD. The advantage to HD is if your project will ever be delivered in HD in the future or delivered on both formats. Then you shoot HD.

But an SD only project, just shoot in SD in the format of your choice.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[Ernie Santella]

The other positive to shoot in HD and deliver in SD is you can easily re-frame shots or do moves on shots that you might not have done and would like to do now. With the extra frame size, you have more options.

Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[Steve Covello]

If you ever put the program on the web, widescreen content sure looks good versus letterboxed SD.

Purely from a production standpoint, SD would be less expensive than shooting HDCam, though about the same as shooting DVCPro HD, or even less if you shoot P2 and do not need to capture from tape [less cost for tape stock, and not having to rent a deck for ingest]. You could shoot P2 for SD as well, but why not if HD would be largely the same workflow.

It all depends on what you see for the longterm future of your program.

steve covelo

[Tom Matthies]

Another benefit to shooting in HD and downconverting to SD is noise reduction. Even though today’s cameras are “quieter” than ever in the video noise area when converting an HD scene into SD, the noise factor in the video is also reduced to a large degree. An otherwise quiet camera’s video is made even cleaner especially if any additional gain was used while shooting. Also, many if not most cameras today feature additional frame rate settings, especially 24p, that are not always available on SD camera. The price point of HD cameras is getting very comparable to SD.Plus you “future-proof” yourself if the footage is to be reused again some time down the road.
Tom

[Chris Borjis]

If you can easily handle the workflow, you should always aquire in HD whenever possible, even for SD projects.

The most simple reason for this is the fact that a well lit and shot production done on an HDV camcorder, then downconverted to SD will look like you shot it on Digital Betacam, with just a hint of a little more noise.

At least thats what it looks like on my Sony Pro CRT.