Help a Newbie with upgrading to HD

[CMD is me]

I have used iMovie for years in standard def. I currently have a Sony SD miniDV and looking to upgrade to HD. I have a 1 yr old Macbook Pro, an external FW800 drive and iMovieHD (may upgrade to the newest iLife). Typically on vacation I'll shoot 2 hrs of video, import them to iMovie, edit down to the 1 hr for max quality, burn to DVD and watch on my HDTV (in SD of course).

I need help getting started. What limitations does HD have? What can I do and what can't I with what I have? Do I need AppleTV to watch them on my HDTV? Even if I only shoot in HD now to have the quality for later when/if Apple incorporates Blue Ray, that's fine with me.

Thanks for your help.

 

[cpcarrot]

Your 1 year old Macbook Pro shouldn’t have any problems editing 2 hours of HD footage and if your happy with iMovie and what you can do with it then stick with it. I wouldn’t recommend upgrading to the new iMovie as it basically sucks compared to the version you already have (very simple to use but removed a lot of the good features). FW800 drive should make a decent scratch disc for you, the only upgrade I would (maybe) recommend is I would make sure you have maximum RAM in your machine as this makes a big difference on performance and is a cheap upgrade.

You can take your pick of cameras but given what you are doing at the moment using miniDV I would recommend sticking with that system and go the HDV route (either Canon HV20 / HV30 or one of the Sony equivalents are good).

Delivery wise is where you do have the unfortunate “missing link”, as there are few options for HD Delivery that would be suitable for you. I have a Mac Mini plugged into my HDTV in order to playback HD stuff in a variety of formats and you could do the same thing plugging your laptop in... It’s a simple solution until Blu Ray turns up but not very convenient. You can burn HD content onto regular DVD but you are limited in the amount of footage you can put on, and you still need something that will support this type of playback…

 

[CMD is me]

I wouldn’t recommend upgrading to the new iMovie as it basically sucks compared to the version you already have (very simple to use but removed a lot of the good features).

Is the latest iDVD worth upgrading to?

Delivery wise is where you do have the unfortunate “missing link”, as there are few options for HD Delivery that would be suitable for you. I have a Mac Mini plugged into my HDTV in order to playback HD stuff in a variety of formats and you could do the same thing plugging your laptop in...

Sounds like AppleTV may be about the only option to watch edited HD video -- not a terrible option, just some added cost.

 

[cpcarrot]

iDVD didn't really change with the 08 edition, basically they just added some extra themes to chose from and did very little else to it. The main changes in iLife 08 were to iMovie, iPhoto and Garage band. So no harm in upgrading from an iDVD standpoint but you don't gain an awful lot doing it.

Apple TV is a reasonable way of watching your HD footage (I'm basically using a Mac Mini to do the same thing). The main disadvantage at the moment is simply being able to share your stuff with other people as unless they have an Apple TV (or other computer hooked up to a TV) there is no convenient way of sharing the footage with them. Might not be an issue depending on what you want to do with the footage.