I am being consulted pre-shoot to make sure the Panasonic HVX200 is configured to work with media composer. I looked at the project/frame rate reference from Avid for this camera. Both the 720p/24p and 1080i/24p say you will open a project in an "alternate" project type of 720p/59.94 and 1080i/59.94, respectively. My questions are:

1. Am I negating the 24p and/or pulldown with either of these project? Especially concerned with the 1080i because it is interlaced.

2. Does anyone have a preference between 720 and 1080? Is it worth being in 1080 with the increase in storage space?

Thanks so much

The most important question is what is your deliverable supposed to be?

 The frame rate of 59.94 is completely correct for "true" 24p projects.  It simply is what accomodates the pull-down.  A native 23.97 rate (as with 720/24pn), for all practical purposes, simply uses less storage; the visual result is the same and uncompromised.  Furthermore, the 59.94 frame rate formats will intercut into each other's timelines which is very handy if, for example, you later find that you need to use a logo or something else that was shot with digibeta. The native 720/24pn format is all alone, however, as regards cross-compatiblilty.  720/24p is more useful (EXCEPT for shooting variable frame rate, where you would have to do a conversion if you wanted to use "pn" in a 59.94 timeline.) But it is best to AVOID INTERLACE if possible.

For a whole bunch of little-known but interesting reasons, more than 90% of tests made with "trained" but blind-tested subjects have demonstrated that 720p renders a superior HD picture over 1080i. I can't detail them all here, but to outline a few:

- subjective tests show that them most important thing in a perception of "HD" is CONTRAST. (60%).  Second is BRIGHTNESS (22%).  Lines of resolution contribute a minor 18% of the impression.  So forget the numbers: 1080 is not better than 720 it is merely super-sized (as a number). Fine for burgers, not so important for video..

- Next consider that when you evaluate 60 frames per second, 1080i is actually sending two 540 lines, so it could legitimately be called 540 when compared to the complete progressive frames of 720.  So much for the super-sizes impression. (Remember that both formats have roughly the same data rate; it is more a matter of how the image is arranged than how much image meets the eye. Both provide roughly the same image, but one is progressive the other interlaced.)

- From a average viewing distance of 9 feet, with a 35" TV set, the human eye cannot distinguish a line as thin a 1080 anyway, so a lot of what "advantage" there is in the resoulution, it goes unnoticed.

- BUT...because of the interlace, a very annoying (hypnotic, headache producing) event happens when very white pixels occur one 1080 line away from very black pixels...so bad it will drive people from the room.  The engineers compensate for this by deliberately blurring each 1080 line so that the problem is SOFTENED. (Is "soft" what you want in HD?) The problems here is that this softening detracts from -- yes -- CONTRAST which is by far the most HD producing element in the image (i.e. very white against very black) so they throw the baby out with the wash.

- And then there is the hearbreak of interlace...alas! It is still with us in the otherwise enlightened age of HD thanks to the evil black tower of SONY, who muscled the format into continuation because they found some way of selling bandwidth that they couldn't find in 720p. (Don't ask me for much detail on this...I understand it is true but am still looking for the details myself.) Interlace has no god-given excuse for existence, for it does (among other things) to the horizontal image much of what the "softening" does to the vertical image; it fracks it up. It is great if you are taking stills of flowerpots, but god save you if you are doing anything that moves...like a movie.

- None of the above should cast darkness upon the wonder of 1080 P.  "Progressive" is a delight, and 1080 lines of it can only render warm, fuzzy feelings.  Therefore, I would shoot my HVX200 in 1080p/24p mode (it still gives timeline-framerate compatibility) for the better of a couple of possible worlds, if the rest of your project (deliverables, etc) can accomodate it.  Otherwise, 720 is the better choice.  Just be careful of compatibilties if your project will require it.  Be sure not to confuse "frame rate" as used in the NLE (actual number of frames per second that the NLE is dealing with: 29.97, 59.94, 23.9 x) vs. the "frames-per-second you are trying to "view" (24p; 30i; etc). They are different animals which are unfortunately referred to interchageably with the same names.

Wow. Thank you so much for your thorough response. I'm going to send it to a couple of friends. This is a short film project and the deliverable will be an HD master for archive, and a digibeta master for duplication. Would 1080p get out of the avid appropriately? and if so, what are my project settings?

thanks again