Re: Future proof project properties

John's generally right here that SD doesn't look all that great uprezzed, but if you're careful you can get a pretty good product.

Case in point. My employers finished a doc a few years ago called Ballets Russes. I think you can rent it or even stream it from Netflix.

The project was shot in DV using a DSR500 (a pretty old camera suitable for industrials, but much better than any prosumer DV cameras). They edited in Media100 as an SD project and did a lot of compositing of archival stills and film in Media100's 844x system. In the end they output the finished project to a Snell & Wilcox box wich uprezzed the video and output that to HDCam. They then sent it off to Sundance and later did theatrical runs.

Even though it was uprezzed DV, it looked very good! Some of this was the care put into the editing process, some of it was the quality of the stills (a bit of sharpness there gives a little relief from the SD video), some of it was the effort put into the audio (they paid a lot for licensing and they also paid a composer and musicians for original work), and most of it was just simply an engaging story. If people are engaged in the story they stop paying attention to a crunchy picture. They're less likely to ignore lousy audio.

They also had years of experience and a good amount of time and money to put into this. It's probably their 5th long form doc. It sounds like you're at the beginning of that learning curve so you can't put the resources into your project that they did.

I'd highly recommend that you read the DV Rebel's guide. It addresses your situation very well. It's not the final word but there's a lot of good information in there.

Rob Mack