I’ve been shooting porn for almost 6 years. Early this year we switched to high definition video. 24 hours ago my website re-launched as CumtrainerHD and everything has changed. My members are already downloading the first batch of HD clips and from what I hear most of them are amazed that such an improvement in quality could happen so soon. Especially considering that I run a single-girl amateur site without studio backing or a big budget to play around with. Simply click on the image below to play an HD sample and see what the fuss is all about. This sample is a little lower in quality (16Mb wmv, right-click to save file) due to the bandwidth restrictions here on the blog, but you’ll get a pretty good idea of what’s possible and already available at my site.

So what are the pitfalls of shooting porn in HDV and how much would you have to fork over in order to turn your own girlfriend (or yourself) into a porn star? An interview with my trusty camera operator and techno geek revealed some surprising facts (Don’t blame me for errors, I’m just reporting):

- Getting a camcorder:
Consumer HDV camcorders start at less than $1500 nowadays and since you’ll be able to use cheap standard MiniDV tapes one can safely say that the starting budget won’t be that big of an issue.
- Lighting:
HDV lighting isn’t that much different from regular DV videography but it sure improves quality if the Mpeg2 codec doesn’t have to struggle with a low signal to noise ratio in low-light conditions. Outdoors shoots yield great results without additional lighting costs. Some HDV camcorders even shoot in total darkness using infrared modes.
- Tripod vs Handheld:
Once big commercial productions start coming out on Blue Ray and HD-DVD you’ll be noticing that Goodfellas is a lot more out of focus than you realized and that Con Air is virtually unbearably at feature length due to excessive camera movement. High resolution brings out the bad stuff. Make sure your camcorder has reliable autofocus or switch to manual if need be. Same goes for camera shake. Activate the stabilizer. Shake will be a problem even on a tripod if there’s a little breeze outside or your floor vibrates when you walk through the room while recording. Keeping the camera still isn’t easy on HDV, especially if you shoot reality POV stuff like my own porn videos.
- Software:
Especially Mac users can choose from a couple of cheap HDV editing options such as iMovie and FinalCut Express. There are probably affordable solutions on the PC side too, but unfortunately Premiere Elements does not yet support HDV.
- Video publishing on the web and on DVD:
Again it seems like Macs are a little more HDV friendly at the moment. The above mentioned editing programs will do both but we use a great new suite from Flip4Mac to get our HD videos into wmv format which can be played back on both Windows and Apple Quicktime. Regardless of what you use it’s important that you deinterlace your footage into a progressive format for web use. Else you’ll have to deal with unsightly horizontal lines and blurry playback.
- Getting HDV onto an LCD or Plasma:
If your camcorder has an HDMI output, just plug it into your HDTV and you’re good to go. If on the other hand you’d like to stream wmv files onto your widescreen TV (from let’s say one of my downloadable movies) you can either set up that display as a second monitor via a VGA cable and use Media Player or - mind you we haven’t tried this yet - get Windows Media Center Edition to stream the clip onto your home entertainment system. It’s probably even possible to go through Xbox360 (theoretically) but we’ll need to do some testing first. Comments and feedback regarding this issue would be greatly appreciated.
- HD DVD players:
In the very near future HD DVD players will have features integrated that allow playback of high-def wmv files (720p/1080i) from discs. Obviously we’ll have to wait and see how well that’ll work.

Click here to check out my personal homepage and get download access to all my hard core HD videos.