After testing Sony’s HDR-FX1, I’m an HDV believer. It’s not the second coming of DV, but it can be extremely useful in a number of circumstances, including when you need to down-sample the results to SD formats. Conversation between Stephen Nathans, editor and myself, December 20, 2004:Nathans: So, now that you’ve spent more time testing with HDV, how do you …

Many of the questions I get from readers and see on Web forums relate to confusion about the formats and file types used in the video production process. Briefly, a format defines the file structure, or how the information is presented in the file. D

I've been down on MPEG-4 for a while now, despite my respect for many of the folks associated with the standard. Given the adoption of Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 by the DVD Forum, there's increasing reason to believe, to paraphrase an old Sout