Question: Trying to find the best prractice method of shooting in 1080P on a Sony EX and downconverting to standard-def ProRes for editing and deliverables. I'm hoping to retain the additional color lines and end up with the higher color space in the lower resolution. I need to lock down an injest method of this nature because I will be dealing with a great deal of content. Would like to automate the crop so we save a centered 720x480 image losing the extra width (no letterbox).

Any suggestions...

simply load & edit in XDcam in the first place, then output a centercrop via Kona / BM in realtime, or nest the HD TL into a SD TL for export.

Something else to think about, if your planning to use ProRes and delivering SD, ProRes medium quality is more than enough. ProRes medium quality is 140Mb/s ~equal to HDCamSR, ProRes (HQ) is 220Mb/s high enough quality to go out to film.

Final deliverable will be MPEG2 to be played off a dedicated MPEG2 player on a closed circuit cable tv network. Need to avoid excessive rendering times. How does this affect the codec workflow