Re: HDCam to 1080P?

Hey Jeff!

an HD progressive format has basically same format as interlaced one. The only thing really changing is the compression, that is made once for the whole picture in progressive, while requires 2 different compression, one for each field, in interlaced format (otherwise compression would mess field separation).

That said, capturing material in p or i mode with same video board won't change the way it captures it.
Nothing will deinterlace for you, quite luckily.
But, being tagged as an interlaced format, interlaced aware software (NLE, or AE…) will (or should) apply deinterlace on your computer screen, for visual comfort only...
Note that interlaced footage in AE, rendered as progressive will force AE to deinterlace. Don't do deinterlace unless you're really sure you wanna do it...

About HDTV, 1080p can perfectly fit into a 1080i. That's the way it always happened with SD.
Progressive footage, like 35mm, is recorded onto interlaced video, one field after the other, but those two field are both results of the same 35 frame scan. So it's like recording mono sound to both tracks of a stereo pair, and still be mono...
Remember 1080p can & will fit well in a 1080i, while 1080i real interlaced format can't fit any other format than 1080i.

Back to your question, if your 1080i is actually interlaced, the last thing you wanna do is convert to 1080p, as it requires deinterlace, where half the 1080 lines is purely suppressed (one field is removed and replaced by the other one). Some plugs do a good job at deinterlace, but it's gonna be long long renders...