Hello Everyone,
This has been beat to death, I know, but I am at a crossroads.
I shot some HDV footage using the PMW-EX1. I edit with Premiere Pro 2.0. We needed the footage to be downconverted to SD, so I tried a bunch of different things. Here they are in order of "best results" to "worst results" (1 being the best).
1. Capture HDV footage over Firewire into an HDV project. Then open an SD project, import the HDV footage, and resize it, by adjusting its scale, to fit perfectly in a 'letterboxed' style. This method proved effective, however, it sometimes seemed as if the resolution of the scaled-down HDV footage was too much for the monitor I was using. Areas of the picture with close lines (i.e. a neck tie fabric pattern) flickered and struggled to hold up. The flickering was similar to what happens after importing a super-high resolution still image and shrinking it down in an SD composition.
1a. Same method as "number 1", however I resized the HDV footage to be '4x3' in the SD project. Because the HDV footage was not scaled down as much as in "number 1", the flickering was non-existent. Obviously, the only disadvantage to this method is losing the "sides" of your image.
2. Capture HDV footage over Firewire into an HDV project. Then simply export the HDV footage as a 720 x 480 Microsoft DV AVI. Then import the AVI file into an SD project. This method seemed to cause more artifacting and an unstable look, especially when the subject in the video is moving around.
3. Capture HDV footage in a downconverted 'letterbox' stream from the Sony EX1's 'Composit Output' into an SD project. For some reason, the color of the image suffered using this method.
MAIN QUESTION - If I were to buy an SDI/HD video card for my PC, would I get better results capturing a downconverted HD signal from the EX1 using the 'SDI output' instead of the 'composit output'??? And if so, would this card (in the following link) provide me "broadcast quality" results as advertised? And by "broadcast quality", I mean the downconverted HD look of shows like "Dirty Jobs" and "Deadliest Catch".
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/432601-REG/Blackmagic_Design_BDLKHDEX...
Thank you all for your patience with this very long post. I look forward to generating a good conversation. Best regards.
-Aaron Cadieux
