Working with efx offline and online : HD High-End

Dear All,

hi, I have several people that I am working with who need to be able to do offline efx (complex compositing and animating) at home, with their offline format, and reintroduce it in an online room. We are mastering to HDCAM Blackmagic 8 bit here.

So this is what I've encountered as 2 questions:

1. Original footage HDV >>> want to add layers. composite, efx and master to HDCAM - Editing at home in HDV, want to output with 4:2:2: color space on HDCAM.
How is the best way for him to edit so he can output to HDCAM here? I dont' want him to work in native HDV, cause the color space for compositing and efx is not so good - apparently even DV looks better!
Therefore, should I have him
a) render everything out to HDCAM from the HDV timeline?
b) export all raw footage to HDCAM and add the efx in the HDCAM timeline?

I would probably expect B) would be better, but the problem is, his system won't let him playback HDCAM at home w/o a 2.5 terabyte raid. he only has a 250 gig drive. I've thought about asking him to work in HDCAM 1920 X 1080 (photo jpeg compression), but don't know if that will work either. Whatever the case, he's going to have to render all his HDV material out to HDCAM, on his old G4, which will choke the machine. So I think I'm stuck. What should I do?

2.Other efx person, Original footage HDCAM >>> want to offline at home and do online later in HDCAM
She will be editing at home, and can't playback HDCAM either, so what's a lower version that she should work in without haveing conflicts of scaling and aspect ratio. I thought that DVCPro is good or even HDV or DV, but when you take the clips and copy it into a HDCAM timeline with the filters and efx, the aspect ratio and scaling goes out of whack from . I want her to work in a 1920 X 1080 timeline, so there won't be any issues with distortion. Should I have her digitize at 1920 X 1080 Photo Jpeg? Is there a higher res. version of it that I can digitize? that will work on her g5 at home with a small lacie drive? I deal with a lot of offline and online people, and now efx. so what should I do?

thanks.
lili