standard definition vs. high definition as far as my wallet's concerned.

(moved from LiveJournal to Blogger.com December 8, 2007.)

Holy crapamoly.

I just finished doing some basic, preliminary number crunching and if I were to invest in a semi-professional HD set-up with the Panasonic HVX200 and my current computer, I'd have to shell out almost $8000 (that includes the camera, of course) to get everything up to snuff. Funny thing is that, right now, my computer's pretty much there -- this is one hell of a powerful PC and would only need a couple of things to make it HD ready. Most of that money is to RECORD the HD footage and get it onto my computer. Screw the P2 card thingie (a 4 GB P2 card holds 20 minutes of footage...) I'd go for a FireStore hard drive and the 4.5 hour model that I used in my number crunching is $1295. I'm not even including a boom mic in this initial assessment, just the camera and such.

As far as SD is concerned, getting different editing software (the same as in the HD configuration -- Vegas+DVD) to replace my really buggy SD software, the camera, and an external hard drive (because I really don't want to be rooting around in my computer, adding things again...I'm a writer-director, not a computer tech) is only slightly more than my budget allows.

Now, a friend called me a couple of days ago and said he could find a really nice HD set-up that would work within my budget...but because from what I've seen of consumer level HD camcorders, and I can't find any information on the model his beloved Steve Jobs was touting at MacWorld last week, while they might take beautiful footage, they're consumer level, not even semi-professional, and would still require a crap-load more money. Plus, how would I record audio with a boom mic? No consumer level HD camcorder is going to have XLR or whatever the HD equivalent is...so I'd have to record on DAT? That's a whole 'nother headache.

To be honest, this whole HD thing is a headache for me -- when it comes to computers, though I'm pretty savvy, I prefer plug & play, y'know? I just want to make movies, but out of necessity, I have to be able to do it all myself. Thank goodness that, most of the time, writing is a solo affair because if I had to depend on others to write the same way that I've had to depend on others to make movies, I would have been locked up in an asylum long ago...

I need to get some sleep...but standard definition, though it's "behind the times," is looking better all the time.