I have a new client in Australia that wants me to shoot some interviews for a doc they are doing. They are doing most of the shooting with the XDCAM HD camera in 1080i50 35mb.

I can rent a camera for a local shoot but they want a shoot in California as well (I am in Maryland).

I am I crazy in shooting the interviews with my HD100 in 720p25 mode, then inputting all the footage into my FCP system and then exporting it out via HDSDI into a XDCAM HD deck in 108050i 35 mbit settings?

The footage will be nicely lit interviews in controlled settings.

My NLE setup is a Dual G5, FCP 5.1.2, Decklink HD card.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Dan Weber

Nicely lit interviews and not a lot of motion should be fine. Depending on who the audience is, no one should notice....

Shooting through a fairly low-quality lens on 1/3" chips then running it through a standards conversion and a second generation of lossy compression will not look as good as a first-generation camera master shot through a (probably) higher quality lens on 1/2" chips.

Exactly what the quality difference would be, I couldn't tell you, but personally, I'd just rent an XDCAM rather than go through that process.

Keep it simple and shoot it all in the same format. I wouldn't dub Mpeg2 to Mpeg2 if I were you. You'll have many headaches.

It shouldn't be too hard to find XDCAM HD for rent in California.

Tim,

Thanks for the feedback.

Renting in LA would not be a problem. The Bay Area doesn't seem to have the cameras being used as much as down south.

I will take this over to the Sony Cinealta HD forum. This doesn't need to plug up the discussions here.

Thanks,

Dan Weber