Hi, I'm a lighting cameraman of many years and I'm just diving in and working with HD for the first time with a GY-HD200E and Sony Vegas 7. (cineform Connect HD)

I'm about to shoot several pieces but need to know how/what/if I can shoot HD, downconvert to SD and burn to DVD for multiple duplication;

Does downconverted HD footage look better than SD?
Does Downconverted footage take up more space once finalised to DVD?
Will a DVD duplicating house have any compatibility issues with downconverted projects on DVD?
At what stage do I downconvert in Vegas?

If any very kind person out there is able to answer, would you also be able to explain what goes on when you down convert. I'm interested to know and learn! I'm getting there slowly with HD and many thanks to all those posters on this forum. I've been reading a lot and learned a great deal already!

Many thanks in anticipation.
STUART CAMPBELL

Does downconverted HD footage look better than SD?

This is probably subjective or dependent upon how you down convert. I personally think the work I do in HD (Uncompressed 8-Bit 1080i from Panasonic DVCproHD) looks incredible when I put it on a DVD (MPEG2).

Does Downconverted footage take up more space once finalised to DVD?

This also depends on what you are encoding it to.

Will a DVD duplicating house have any compatibility issues with downconverted projects on DVD?

This depends upon whether or not they have the proper player for your type of media. A good dupe house should.

At what stage do I downconvert in Vegas?

I am not familiar with Vegas, but I am assuming you can down convert during capture by making you settings in the begining set to your desired output. Or you can edit in the native form, and then encode to MPEG, DV or whatever.

I would convert the HDV file(m2t) to an intermediate form, for example cineform or sony's YUV, keeping the HD resolution thru the edit process. as the very last step, downconvert to SD. I beleive it's a benefit to work in the larger color space until the last moment.