HD to SD?

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Hi all,

I am interested in getting a new camcorder when my 1st child arrives in april.

I have been somewhat interested in the new prosumer level HD cameras. But I was wondering about converting from HD to SD (my parents dont have HD). I know they can record in SD, but can you convert an HD recording into SD?

Cheers,

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[NorCalLights]

Assuming you'll be importing your footage to your Mac, all you have to do is export from iMovie. There are handy presets for movies fit for emailing (very low quality) or you can burn your movies to a DVD that will play in any DVD player.

 

[Mydriasis]

HD obviously has more picture information but costs more and you can't burn your HD footage in HD quality to DVD as of yet. But it's easy to downscale.

If you have the money and a fast computer, get the HD. You can always downscale now to show your parents, but you will never be able to invent pixels that were never captured.

It will be worth it, kids grow so fast. But you still have 5 months time to think about it.

 

[Texas04]

In short you can bring HD video down to SD, however yes you will loose quality. It wont be "Full HD" like it should be. This is because DVD burners for HD have not yet been realeased for consumers. Only the big boys in hollywood. And then only a few use them.


You could buy a really good SD video camera and save space on your Hard Drive for more video. And Speaking as an Uncle and Big Brother, getting footage of lil ones is prolly the best Every once in a while ill pull out old DVD's i made in iMovie from birthdays and trips and I get to see them. Its a great thing really

 

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great, thanks guys.

i guess i will stick with SD for the moment, unless something great comes out in the next few months.

any thoughts on a great SD camera?

 

[FinnG]

I think you should go for HD. The video world is moving over towards HD at a cracking pace - Hi-Def TVs, Blu-Ray / HD-DVD players, PS3 consoles, cameras, etc.

At the moment, it is still difficult to edit HD (or more specifically for a lot of the consumer/prosumer cameras, HDV). You'll need a beast of a Mac to do it comfortably. But the great thing is that the Sony cameras (the ones I use) do an excellent conversion from HDV to SD in-camera, on the fly, while you capture to your Mac. It means that you always shoot HDV, and you keep your HDV tapes for future use, but you only use up hard-drive space on your Mac for the SD-size footage. Nice and easy to edit. Also, footage shot in HDV and downconverted to SD looks better than footage shot natively in SD. It's the best of all worlds.

If it's prosumer you're looking for, both Sony and Canon have new models out that look smashing (the Sony camera is the FX7). If that's overkill for you, look at the consumer models instead.