Great questions here. In our December issue (which hits shelves on the 13th of November) we have a column written specifically to address shooting in 16:9. I suggest you give it a read. But, this is the forums after all, so I’ll paraphrase some main thoughts. Shooting 16:9 will help you in the long run as TV standards continue to move towards the latest 16:9 standard. The good news about YouTube is that they will now take 16:9 footage and throw the letterbox bars on there for you. This helps you save time and, I suppose, years from now when most everyone is posting 16:9 footage to YouTube, those bars will disappear and you’ll see it for what it is. Shooting HDV versus SD does indeed have its perks. Generally speaking when you down-convert from HD to SD for YouTube, you video will look a bit better in quality. Lastly, if you want the 24p film look, you need to shot in 24p. However, there are some software plug-ins out there than will help mimic that in the common high-end editing applications. But in my personal opinion, it’s not worth the time and money. Not everything needs to look like film. The Coke/Mentos video didn’t look like film and I don’t think it held them back from any success.
Mark
