Need advice on shooting format for doc using HF-S100

awjrichards

I'm looking for some help selecting the best shooting format on my HF S100 for a documentary I am working on.

The documentary is being shot with the HF S100 but will be incorporating much lower-quality and non-HD footage from some FlipVideo cameras. We will likely be capturing 100-200 hours of footage but have a limited budget for file storage. The documentary will likely be screened in theaters, but will predominantly be distributed on the internet and on DVDs.

I've shot and edited film years in the past, but I am new to digital/HD video. The options and possible configurations are confusing to me - especially since we'll be mixing video from different types of cameras. I'm questioning whether it's even worth it to attempt to deal with HD footage - would it make more sense to shoot lower quality footage on the camera and convert to a non-HD format prior to editing? Or does it make more sense to try and capture higher quality footage and not worry too much about the differences in quality between our HD camera and the low-quality non-HD cameras?

Also, I see that there are 5 different recording modes on the HF S100 - MXP, FXP, XP+, SP and LP. MXP and FXP shoot in 1920x1080 and the rest shoot in 1440x1080. Aren't these different aspect ratios? Does it make more sense to shoot in a 1440x1080 mode since the footage from the FlipVideo cameras will be 4:3 and not 16:9?

Thanks so much for any help - my head is spinning from all the possibilities!
Arthur