So, I could I be making a mistake with below ingest flow? I am new to HD and a little disappointed with results which may be my shooting skills/knowledge as I transition from full auto to manual.

1) I am shooting 98% of footage on FX1000 HDV tape, then ingest with smaller Canon HDV camcorder. Is it not advised to shoot with one and ingest with another?

I seemed to get away with this while shooting SD on VX2100 and cheaper DV cam.

2) Is ingesting basically "what you shot is what you get" or are there other variables that effect ingest quality?

Thanks all.

HDV isn't quite as standardized as DV, so there are some differences between different manufacturer's devices. I don't recall anything unique about Canon's small camcorders. You could fall back to your FX1000 for troubleshooting, then move back to the Canon when you have things working and know what it should look like.

A proper ingest is purely a digital transfer of data from tape to hard drive, and should be "what you see is what you get".

However, with what I'm guessing you're experiencing, there is a problem I've seen occasionally. That's where some consumer-level software comes up by default when you connect your camera, and instead of just transferring your video, transcodes it to some other size and codec. A friend had this problem, I think the software she was using is Wondershare, or something with the word Wonder in it.

The best way to analyze your results is to download the freeware MediaInfo and check out the size & codec of an ingested file. For HDV it should be 1440x1080 MPEG2 Transport File. If it's anything other than that this is where to focus. (You need to select one of the advanced views in MediaInfo to see all the info.)

What video editing software are you using? It should have ingest/capture that preserves the HDV format.

Thanks Seth, I use 2 programs and also have Sony Vegas Movie studio. Primarily use Corel VideoStudio Pro X5 for ingestion and just downloaded and ran the Mediainfo program with info below. After panicking this morning, things are looking better and I believe the issues I have are low-light related on the footage. Time to stop using auto mode and learn iris and gain adjustments :)

General
Complete name : C:\Users\Darryn\Desktop\Derek\Derek Raw 1.mpg
Format : MPEG-PS
File size : 2.81 GiB
Duration : 15mn 50s
Overall bit rate : 25.4 Mbps

Video
ID : 224 (0xE0)
Format : MPEG Video
Commercial name : HDV 1080i
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@High 1440
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Custom
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Duration : 15mn 50s
Bit rate : 24.5 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 25.0 Mbps
Width : 1 440 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : Component
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.526
Stream size : 2.71 GiB (96%)
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 192 (0xC0)
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 2
Duration : 15mn 50s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -204ms
Stream size : 43.5 MiB (2%)

Yes, the report from MediaInfo looks good. That would confirm that your ingest method is working fine.

To be sure, auto gain can yield some very grainy results.