I'm working with HDV footage from my A1 and I was just curious what everyone was thinking would be the highest best way to export? I usually just do the quicktime export, but thats only 230mb's about for 1 and a half mins. Being as i just do shorts, is there anything higher quality=) thank youu

You can't output any higher quality than the original codec it was shot in. However, if you output any file in anything other than uncompressed then it will be re-compressed again.

The output file type and size all depends on what the final output medium is supposed to be; if you're going to DVD then you've no choice but MPEG-2 for DVD authoring. If you're going to broadcast then it needs to be in the format the network wants. If you're doing a film-transfer then it would most likely be uncompressed to prevent further quality degradation. If it's going to the web H.264/MPEG-4 or a high-bitrate WMV is typical.

okay thanks, idk why but when i export things from compressor it says about 12 gbs! so i was just curious if that was AMAZING quality, or just something really weird. Thanks though, ill stay with the format i've been happy with for all this timee =)