Hi Im new to this DV thing so this might sound newbish to some of you, but I was wondering to get a good movie(would probably be viewed in vcd or a computer) is it better to record in Progressive mode or the normal mode.

Oh and the DV-cam I am using a Panasonic NV-DS65 which is a PAL one.

I would just shoot in interlaced, and use frame mode here and there for effect. Which is better? I don't know.

I have a sort of dumb question about progressive myself. What happens when you set the shutter speed to 1/30 on a camera like the PD-150 or PDX-10? With 60i video there's a separate field captured 60 times per second as I understand it. Does the 1/30 sec shutter speed cause the same frame to be written to both fields? How would this differ from 30p?

I was on a shoot a few days ago and used a 1/30 sec shutter speed in very dim light after sunset. I like the way this turned out, and when I view individual frames on my monitor I don't see any interlacing like I do with my 1/60 sec exposed footage.

Good question Boyd I've often wondered this myself for I too like the effect of 1/30 on my VX2k even in good lighting situations.

Well I've been reading a bit on this topic and found the following:

http://www.ferrario.com/ruether/vid_pict_characts.htm#pseffects
ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasonic/Drivers/PBTS/papers/Progressive-WP.pdf
http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/filmlook/pappas1.php

From what I gather, after a cursory look at these, you are sacrificing resolution by shooting at 1/30 or by using various deinterlacing schemes. This led me to the DVFilm Maker (http://www.dvfilm.com/maker) website. I downloaded the trial and applied it to some footage. It seems to live up to its promise of turning 60i into 30p "intelligently"... I liked the results. They stress that you should shoot 60i if you want to use their software, and should not change the shutter speed from 1/60.

Anybody around here used this software?