During the summer, I capture pitch-by-pitch video for a college-level baseball team. I have two primary objectives for this video. 1) to upload inning-by-inning clips to a SmugMug account for players, families, and fans to view online... and 2) to create a DVD of video highlights at the end of the season. This is all voluntary work but I want to get the very best quality I can for both of these end products. I recently purchased the Canon Vixia HF 30 camcorder and for the first game I captured the video in AVCHD format 28 Mbps LPCM 60P.

For the inning-by-inning clips that I upload the day after the game, I simply place text at the begnning of the video identifying the date, opposing team, and inning...add overlapping transition between each play...fade the sound in at the beginning and out at the end...and then produce the video. (Currenly using PD12).

Later in the season, I come back and review the inning by inning video clips to identify highlight-worthy clips and produce each play. Again, these highlight clips will be placed on the internet and also used for input in authoring a DVD.

My struggle is determining the best format to use in each of these steps as well as the best detailed settings for whatever format I choose. For the online clips, I want the best viewing possible but must take into consideration the file size and how long it is going to take me to upload each of them. For the DVD, the volume of data is going to require the authoring process to compress the files anyway.

In the past, I've used MPEG-2 format for both steps, but that doesn't result in the best online viewing. This year, I'm thinking of using MP4 files for both steps. The downside of that is the length of time it will take the DVD authoring process to convert from MP4 to MPG. By the way, I still use Sony's DVD Architect to author the DVD; haven't taken the time to learn PD's menuing and authoring steps.

Sorry for the rambling, but I welcome any thoughts folks might have on this.