I want to shoot sports in HD with the JVC HD100 and put the videos on the internet, is this worth doing? I mean are the videos that much better? I've never really seen HD footage on the internet before and I was wondering if it was worth doing. I am trying to start up a website for high school sports and my catch is that my videos are in HD.

Since you will probably be putting the videos out there in a 16:9 frame, I suggest that 480X270 is a good starting point. Having said that, there is little value to HDV over SD when shown on the web.

However, if you can edit a large HDV frame in a 480X270 project, you can see the action pretty close up compared to a DV camera doing the same thing. You have more pixels to work with.

Anytime I hear someone confused about this I always point them to the Apple site:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/

And don't forget to check the Microsoft web site while you're at it:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/hdvideo.aspx

I think the issue is web delivery. At the current point in time, using "HD" as your catch phrase is a bad move. It usually means huge badwidth and high system specs for the end user if your are even thinking about the suicide move of full rez distribution. 60p content could be a far stonger selling assett, especially if sports is the focal point. Shoot 60p on the HD100 16:9 HDV SD (miles adead of 16:9 DV) mode then downsample to the web at some of the above (Gotz) suggested resolutions, or even lower. Then you would have some sports worth watching.
Ps - I think the only people confussed are those that refer others to the M$ or the Appltel stores ;>)
Just kidding there are a few good HD outlines on both, somewhere.

Agreed that it isn't currently very practical to deliver full HD resolution via the internet, but it can't hurt to start with HD source and downsample to lower resolutions at broadband bit rates. I've gotten decent results using a resolution of 640x360 with a bit rate of ~1 Mbps, which should play well on most recent computers. See example below:

http://www.videomem.com/weddings/gordon-lacey/highlights.wmv

My preference would be to push the resolution to 960x540 with a bit rate of 1.5-2 Mbps, but that's probably too much bandwidth for widespread distribution.

Anytime I hear someone confused about this I always point them to the Apple site:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/

Thomas

Thanks for posting that link

JohnG