I accidentally started my first wedding in HDV, the rest was done SD. Is it safe to just drop them all in an SD project in Premiere and half size the HDV clips?

why not downconvert in camera from hdv to dv to try and match to your sd footage which should be a better match(depends on cameras used)

i used the Canon H1 and a firestore....how would I downconvert 'in camera'?

Let me get your question straight. You filmed a wedding, 1 wedding. The beginning of the wedding was in HDV and the rest of the clips were SD. Now you have to edit it. Your question is, “how should I downconvert the first few shots to SD from HDV”.

If that IS your question then yes in your NLE you can just half size the HD clips. Go to about 45% and it should be fine. Unfortunately the damage has already been done by shooting in HDV. You MAY see compression artifacts, and unfortunately there is no way to remove them. The advantage of shooting SD is there are not as many compression artifacts. I doubt it will be noticeable this time, but watch out in the future.

By the way. Even if you didn’t downconvert there are still compression artifacts in most HDV footage. That’s why for now I only shoot SD, but I’ll save this chat for another time.

Have fun

Let me get your question straight. You filmed a wedding, 1 wedding. The beginning of the wedding was in HDV and the rest of the clips were SD. Now you have to edit it. Your question is, “how should I downconvert the first few shots to SD from HDV”.

If that IS your question then yes in your NLE you can just half size the HD clips. Go to about 45% and it should be fine. Unfortunately the damage has already been done by shooting in HDV. You MAY see compression artifacts, and unfortunately there is no way to remove them. The advantage of shooting SD is there are not as many compression artifacts. I doubt it will be noticeable this time, but watch out in the future.

By the way. Even if you didn’t downconvert there are still compression artifacts in most HDV footage. That’s why for now I only shoot SD, but I’ll save this chat for another time.

Have fun


What are you talking about? damage has already been done? LOL so we should all sell our HDV camera and buy SD camera to shoot from now on? or keep our HDV camera but shoot in SD?. LOL

You MAY see compression artifacts, and unfortunately there is no way to remove them. The advantage of shooting SD is there are not as many compression artifacts. I doubt it will be noticeable this time, but watch out in the future. By the way. Even if you didn’t downconvert there are still compression artifacts in most HDV footage. That’s why for now I only shoot SD, but I’ll save this chat for another time. Have fun
Well, the reply is funny indeed, and if you just wanted to humor us, I'll give you nine out of ten, Alan (one point penalty for not mentioning that this is a joke)!

But seriously, HDV footage can be easily ruined by improper downrezzing. From my experience it's not easy to mix DV and HDV footage on the same timeline (my experience is with PremPro) and still get good results. If it's possible, I would suggest working the HDV portion in HDV and downconverting only at the end to SD mpeg2 for DVD, I suppose that's your final product.

If, for any reason, you need to mix the footage on the same timeline, I would decompress and downrez the HDV portion with VirtualDub MPEG2 using a high quality intermediate (uncompressed or HuffYUV) and add that to my SD timeline.