Here's a brief thought. I film in 1920x1080 and wish to export as 720. I want to do this so I have a large area of resolution as a buffer to resize or pan. Most of you understand the benefits, but my question is what is the most efficient way everyone else does this or something similar. I can do this in After Effects, but seem to have problem trying to do this in Premiere. It seems that in Premiere if I create a 720 timeline and place 1080 footage in said timeline, the program automatically attempts to resize the footage. Am I missing a step or is after effect the best way to go?

I shoot 1920x1080i 25np avc intra 100 on my panasonic HPX301 all the time I also have a canon HF11 that does similar format at 24mbs as a 2nd camera.

All media goes into final cut pro at pro res 422 at the same rates and I produce a master 1920x1080i 25np file in pro res 422.

For my WD box and for uploading to vimeo etc I make an apple tv file at 1280x720p with a bit rate of around 5mbs.

I also do my DVD's from the pro res aster and it seems to be a good workflow from what I have experienced so far.

Here is an example of the 1280x720 quality:Panasonic AG-HPX301E Test 4 on Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/5014764)

I'm on a PC, with 1080i footage as a starting point.

What I will sometimes do is smart-deinterlace to 1080p30 or 1080p60 using Avisynth and the TDeint plugin (which has settings for p30 or p60) and save to Cineform codec. Then edit/pan/resize that in Premiere in a 720p timeline.