Hi, We're considering purchasing the Canon HV30 to use as a capture deck, in addition to shooting HDV.

For capturing non-HV30-created material, footage was shot in these formats:

--standard DV (30 fps / 60i) from Sony PD170
--DVCAM from an undetermined Sony
--24P from Panasonic DVX100B
--24F from Canon XL1
--24F from Canon XH A1

That's 5 different animals. It's not all the same project ;-)

NLE will be FCP Studio 2

How much of this can the HV30 actually capture?

After reading many threads I'm thinking that using the HV30 as a capture deck for many non-HV30 tapes shot on other formats may not be possible, and of those listed, perhaps it will only capture the standard DV 60i correctly and with ease.

No DVCAM, no Panny 24P, no backward 24F from Canon XL1, and no Canon XH A1 24F without doing a lot of homework first.

In particular, it would hurt if we can't use it to capture the Panny24P assets.

But what have folks found who have actually tried multiple format captures?

Thanks.

--standard DV (30 fps / 60i) from Sony PD170
--DVCAM from an undetermined Sony
--24P from Panasonic DVX100B
--24F from Canon XL1
--24F from Canon XH A1

In order asked:
Yes - any vanilla DV at 60i can be read (NTSC standard)
No - Different animal completely
Dunno - If it wraps 24p in a 60i wrapper, maybe
Dunno - Same as above
Yes - In spite of the fact it cannot shoot the same 24f format as the A1

Best I can tell, the HV40 will shoot 24f the same format as the A1 but that's irrelevant for your capturing purposes.

I've actually done the first and last on your list, repeatedly without a catch.