This is a hypothetical that I'm likely to run into in the near future, and would rather work out now rather than in crunch time!  I work for a news station that shoots on SD P2, our company owns a station in the next city that has just gone over to HD P2 (720P/60).  I have my laptop set up running Express and love the P2 workflow.  Sooner or later, I'm going to find myself in a situation where I'm going to want to exchange footage with my HD neighbors.

I've loaded the drivers for their camera (Panasonic HPX-500) and have successfully consolidated material into a HD Project.

This brings me to the next step.  Getting the HD material into a SD Project so that it can be intercut and exported.  (I normally play it back to the P2 card via IEEE-1394, and then play out through a microwave truck.)

I had assumed (incorrectly) that I could simply transcode the HD down to the SD format.  If only it were that simple.

Has any7one else encountered this problem and have any ideas?  Keeping in mind that this is a news application, I need to be able to travel light (no extra gear) and time is seldom on my side.

Do I ask too much?

Well for one i would upgrade to the latest version Xpress Pro as it handles P2 far betten then previous version.. check the tutorials for more info.

As Avid features an open timeline there is no reason why it could not work. You can have both SD and HD in one timeline as long as the framerates match.

Menno