Best end quality...

[aaphotog]

If I were looking to create a 720p video, would I get better quality from shooting and editing it at 720p, or shooting and editing it at 1080p and then exporting it with adobe media encoder to 720p? Or would there not be a difference?

I notice how having a 5mp image from the start doesn't seem as clear as say a 10mp image that is exported to 5mp. Seems like it gets squeezed down therefore being cleaner

I'm not speaking on 1080, I only used the numbers as I don't recall the bigger ratios that ML raw allows.

[Audionut]

All other things being equal, more resolution = more detail.

With raw, it's a case of whether you can shoot around the different focal length required to compensate for the crop factor.
And to be honest, with raw footage and only minor resizing happening, the artifacts from the resizing algorithm will probably negate any advantage, although it may appear sharper.

With H.264, the advantage is greater, as the resizing to a smaller resolution will help to hide the added encoding artifacts.

[deleted.account]

720P mode is horrible, why throw more away at the start? Personally I use 1080P and resize to 720P at the encoder.