HD workflow

[Lazlo]

So, I've never shot HD before. As luck would have it, I had access to a HVX200 to shoot a 10-15min senior honors project for free. We're about halfway through shooting, and now I'm starting to think about the workflow problems I've heard all about... I'm sure this is a very rudimentary question, but is there any possible way to maintain the HD quality outputting to DVD or to miniDV tape, or to maintain the quality, is it required to transfer to film or go through some other really expensive process? And if compression is a requirement, how would you recommend approaching this with the least loss of quality. This a very low budget production. Thank you so much!

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Transferring to film is not really a "quality adding" process, more of a degrading process in some ways (compared to just digitally projecting the HD source material).

Your original recording is at highest quality that the image will be technically (not necessarily artistically though), unless you find a way of bypassing the quality-reducing step of recording to the compressed & color subsampled DVCPRO-HD codec, such as the Andromeda set-up does for the DVX-100.

In terms of the best way to color-correct and then downconvert for DVD or author for Blu-Ray, I don't know. But it always helps to start with the best original photography.