How to shoot 1080p/60, output to 720p/60, so Warp Stabilizer or zoom/crop has no quality loss?

Question

I'm new to AE, and making a painful transition form FCP to Premiere, so please be patient, I don't understand many of the subtalties of these apps yet.  :-)
Also, please forgive the long explaination, I'm having trouble articulating the problem...
I'm shooting in 1080p/60, AVCHD.  I plan mainly to output to 720p/60.
The idea being, that if I need to warp stabilize footage, or zoom/crop, I can do so without any quality loss.
I don't want to edit the project in 1080p/60, because if I stabilize it, and it blows up the image, it will result in quality loss. Then when I scale down for final output, that pixilated/crapified footage will be present just in scaled down form.
I don't want the footage to be scaled down first, then, when I stabilize it, I'm blowing up 720p footage (thus defeating the whole purpose of doing this) and once again, outputting pixilated/crappified footage.
What are the steps / workflow to set up Premiere and the stabilizing shots in AE, such that I'm working in 720p, but using the 1080p footage, so that extra resolution is available when I need to crop, zoom, stabilize, etc. the footage... and can do so without any quality loss?  It would be great to have that ability to zoom in on elements in post, almost 2x, and not see any loss of quality.
Thanks in advance!
-Jason Wallace

Answer 1

100% positive.  There is a family of lesser known Prosumer Panasonic cameras (my particular model is the TM700) that record 1080p/60.  It's a 3-chip, CMOS, that genuinly records at that resolution and frame rate.  Has audio input, headphone output, shoe mount, zebra stripes, touch screen, good battery life, and a manual focus ring (fly by wire, can be set for exposure, framerate, or focus).  Also has very good low light capabilities, that are much better than the published specs would lead you to believe.  The firmware is a bit goofy, and was clearly designed by engineers, not people who have ever shot video.  For example some things that should be easily accessible, are buried in menus, while other useless "fluff" features are front and quickly accessible.... but if you can live with a few stupid firmware compromises, it's absolutely AMAZING bang for the buck, and well under $1k to buy.
Note: if I'm not mistaken, the camera can only output via HDMI 1080i/60, but for absolute certain the video files being recorded are genuine 1080p/60. (This has lead to some confusion and forum arguements as to whether the camera is actually 1080p/60)
This was one of the main reasons for my moving from FCP to Premiere, as Premiere Pro handles the 1080p/60 AVCHD files, while FCP requires they first be transcoded and inflated to a intermediate codec.
-Jason W