Authoring my first project, need some help

[tomperson]

Hi all,
I'm just about starting my first serious project, which is a 5 minute videoart piece. I need some help regarding some settings in the Vegas project and then regarding encoding. .

- I plan on doing it in 16:9, Black and White.

- The footage comes from mixed sources (Canon S2 IS, Panasonic PV-GS250, Canon HV20E), in mixed formats (4:3 640x480, 16:9 video SD).

- I need to author for both DVD (PAL DV) and for the web (youtube and my website).

Some questions:

- What should be the projects options? PAL DV (720x576 D1 Pixels), PAL DV Widescreen? PAL DV 768x576 square pixels? What interlacing options? Progressive?

- Despite the fact that the image will be ultimately processed quite a bit, what are the common steps to match the videos? (Levels, Contrast, etc) Any other details to remember when working with mixed media?

- What are the steps to get the best quality MPEG-2 video that will work ok in most DVD players?

[Worley]

The project settings should, in my opinion, be set to accommodate the HD footage. So, I would set it as follows:

Template: HDV 1080-50i (1440x1080, 25fps)
Field Order: progressive
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.3333 (HDV)

This should not affect the lower resolution clips.

[tomperson]

Despite the fact that some of the footage was taken with HV20, i'm working in SD. In fact, i captured HV20's videos with DV lock, as I don't have time right now to try and learn all the HD specifics...

[Lunchbox]

tomperson, you might want to capture as HDV and downsize to SD with NLE instead of using DV-Lock. There is a quality enhancement in downsizing. Check out this thread

http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=1246

[Worley]

If everything is HDV, just use the PAL DV Widescreen (720x576, 25.000 fps) templates and all the other settings will be fine.

[SenorKaffee]

Many people disagree what the ideal way to encode for YouTube is. You might want to discuss that in another thread. ^^