I'm pretty sure I know this answer but I thought I would ask.

Is it better to shoot in 1080i (my camera is a Canon HF10) still, even though the final product will be going on Vimeo or Youtube, a 720p web service...or should I just shoot in 720p so no conversion to 720p will be needed.

Which will ultimately have better video quality in the end for those sites?

Bryan

Since these sites use progressive playback usually at 24p, then you are best to shoot as close to that format if you want the playback to best match your project.

Interlaced will need to be converted to progressive somehwere in the chain, so shooting progressive is always desired for web output.

Tim this is what confuses me a little. I read on an Apple Forum where the Canon HF10 outputs all video as 60I. According to the sequence settings in FCP, that seems to be the case. It does this even when I record in 30p or 24p on the camera so I am kind of losing the reasoning for even having a 30p/24p modes on the camera. I'm new to alot this so maybe something is lost on me. I'm coming from SD betacam tape editing from years back.

Also, when I set the field dominance setting to None in my sequence setting, I don't have to deinterlace any video. Would this be my best option for best quality?

Thanks
Bryan

Would someone mind confirming that YouTube and Vimeo both currently only output at 24P?

Tim this is what confuses me a little. I read on an Apple Forum where the Canon HF10 outputs all video as 60I. According to the sequence settings in FCP, that seems to be the case. It does this even when I record in 30p or 24p on the camera so I am kind of losing the reasoning for even having a 30p/24p modes on the camera. I'm new to alot this so maybe something is lost on me. I'm coming from SD betacam tape editing from years back.

Also, when I set the field dominance setting to None in my sequence setting, I don't have to deinterlace any video. Would this be my best option for best quality?

Thanks
Bryan

Bryan, the 24p/30p modes are being "hidden" inside the 60i stream. So for the 60 fields, the camera combines them to get 30p. Same thing with 24p to some extent. This footage has markers in it for your NLE to read. So when you put the footage in the editor, the program only sees it as progressive footage.

You would only need to de-interlace if you shot the footage as interlaced. Either way, you want to output a progressive file for computer playback.

Would someone mind confirming that YouTube and Vimeo both currently only output at 24P?

That information is at least partly out of date - my understanding is that Vimeo now accepts 24p, 25p and 30p without converting the framerate. Can't comment on Youtube.

YouTube does all framerates unless you are rendering WMV. WMV is locked in 29.97 when it's converted on the cloud transcoding servers.

For Vimeo Basic uploads, make sure your upload has a lot of motion to prevent it from being converted to FLV. All uploads are converted to MP4 except for low motion (talking head) videos. Plus users should have no problems on this front and you get to upload 1080p to both YT and Vimeo Plus now.

Thanks Graham and Jack. One of Vimeo's staff confirmed it is 30p. I don't have a YouTube account anyway but sometimes convert and upload videos for friends there.

Thanks for the updates. I am out of date with the 24p assertion. I know this was true for Vimeo not too long ago.

Further to Vimeo - If you upload 60P material and allow it to be downloadable, the DOWNLOADABLE material (available for 1 week after upload, I believe) WILL be 60P (you would be downloading the raw uploaded file).

I shoot 1080i with my HF11 all the time and import it to final cut pro as 1920x1080i.

I then export a master at 1920x1080i 25p and then produce an apple tv 1280x720p 5mbs mp4 file for you tube.

You can see some the resulting quality here: YouTube - British Beef Jerky Shoot 7-8-09 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1o1aE9OkHw)