I have a Z1. I shoot almost everything in HDV, but edit in HDV only half the time, DV the other half.

I am frustrated by the quality of the DV codec, particularly when it comes to graphics/text and green screen keys. Do I have any other choices for editing in FCP using a different codec with my camera?

I have never tried to create new projects with a different format setting, because I'm always working with either NTSC DV or HDV. Can I simply use a different timeline setting with DV/HDV footage? Or do I have to have a different camera?

I don't know much about the different formats, but I'm hoping there's a way to use a better quality codec/timeline with my existing HDV/DV footage.

BTW- I don't know if this should be in the FCP forum or this one, so I'll start here.

Try decompressing/resizing the HDV footage to uncompressed RGB 1980x1024 and work with that, see if it fits your needs and is fast enough for editing/compositing (depending on your hardware might not be real time). You can use MPEG Streamclip (free) for decompressing, I'm not sure what else is available on the Mac.

What is your final product, standard def or high def?

HDV has never been a good post format, and will never be. For my own part if i have to do hdv, being all Avid, transcode to DNxHD 120tr to work around the problems with hdv in post.

I don't know which version of FCP you are using, but the latest you should have the opportunity to use apple new DI codec, ProRes, instead of the hdv/mpeg2.

But neither DV or HDV is the best when it comes to green/bluescreen work, and will never be, although I've seen some impressive things done with both when you work around the "problems" and not against them.

I shoot in HDV and edit using the Cineform CFHD.avi codec. It seems to be a very robust format that tolerates post production quite well. When the project is finished, you can export to whatever HD or SD delivery format you need.
I believe that Cineform will now convert HDV into Apple frendly codecs (Quicktime) as well.
Check it out: www.cineform.com