Hai All,
I am very new in this field. So please excuse me if I ask anything foolish!!
If I shoot in HD/HDV mode in Mini DV tape (with HVR HD1000U) can I capture
it and edit it in DV mode with out letterboxing and reducing its HDV quality?
I want the output in 720/576 without reducing its HDV quality. Is it possible?
[I'm using Edius Grassvalley Editing Suite].

Basically No. HDV is 16x9, cannot be changed, there isn't such a thing as HD 4x3. So if you want the output to be 4x3 it will have to be letterbox or you will have to crop the 16x9 down to 4x3 and this will reduce the resolution from HDV to SD. You would capture the HDV file and use in a 4x3 DV project in Edius. Use the Layout tool to decide how you want the image to be cropped , in Edius V5 this can be keyframed so it doesn't have to be the same crop for the whole length of the clip but can change over time. Starting with the HDV image you can zoom to about 4:1 and still get the full resolution of SD in 4x3. HDV is 1440x1080 which is a 16x9 image with pixel ratio of 1.33 so your 720x576 is about 1/4 the resolution of the HD image but in a 4x3 format. IF you scale this original down to fit into the SD 4x3 width it will be letterboxed. If you re scale using the height as the standard the sides will be cropped off ( pan and scan mode). The Layout tool in Edius has presets for both these modes as well as allowing you to set the crop as you wish.
You could also scale to a 16x9 SD image( Edius 16x9 SD project) which will have the same pixel count but different pixel ratio for anamorphic display.

Ron Evans