cool, thanks for that, makes perfect sense! guess i figured hdv was a codec in its own right and couldn’t get my head around the h264 requirement. Just in regards to the digibeta master, i was only going this route because i edit for a tv station geared around a blackmagic digibeta workflow. Finished in 1024 uncompressed mainly because its never caused me problems before and works throughout the workflow, not a big fan of the image sequence route. What would you suggest would be the best format method to master to? We have a hdcam recorder deck also but obviously my export is far different to the hdcam format than say the digi. Any ideas?