Will I be able to playback HDV that was shot on fx/z1 onto a HVR-A1U viceversa???

Thanks

I would imagine so. Thats what I'm going to use as a playback deck to import into FCP.

No problem, I have the FX1, Z1, A1 and M10 deck, all play back each others HDV in any combo with no problems at all.

Paul

The A1 doesn't downconvert, does it? If not, this kind of crushes my hopes of getting the A1 as an alternative to the pricey M10 deck.

Yes, you can downconvert on the A1 and if it had been out before I got hold of a M10, I am not sure if I would have gone that route.
The only downside to using the A1 as a deck that I can see is that you may 'Fry' it very quickly as it will run very hot if you have it switched on importing for hours at a time.

Cheers
Paul

How about the HC1 for playback only. I would capture HDV file to computer and convaert from there to inteermediate codec format. So I would only need a camera to feed footage to my system.

If you can get it off and back on the cam in real time, that's fine, The G5 is not bad, but it can take me about 3-4 hours to get an hours worth of HDV onto my G4 powerbook in which time you have to leave the cam on or you loose the buffer on the mac hence why things can get a bit hot!

Regards
Paul

Paul thanks for the reply. I am only looking to get the video off of the tape and on to my PC system to take into Cineform HD, to convert on the fly during capture to Cineform Intermediary codec, and then into Sony Vegas6c. Or I might just capture straight to Sony Vegas and convert to Proxy codec using GearShift. This process I am still debating, but will probably go with Cineform HD, due to faster capture and conversion process, as well as slightly smaller file sizes.

My final output will be to standard DVD currently, until a HD DVD delivery format has been finalized. So, I have no need to send back to the camera at this time.

If you can get it off and back on the cam in real time, that's fine, The G5 is not bad, but it can take me about 3-4 hours to get an hours worth of HDV onto my G4 powerbook in which time you have to leave the cam on or you loose the buffer on the mac hence why things can get a bit hot!

Regards
Paul

Holy crud!!!

I'd be slashing my wrists if any of my PC's got close to excruciatingly slow times like that... Yikes.

Little snippets of how Mac's are coping with HDV - like your G4 Powerbook's staggeringly tardy ingest times, aren't exactly helping the advancement of the HDV cause!!

Well I think the point is that a single processor G4 (which is basically 3+ year old technology) isn't suited for this or other high end applications. Motorola/IBM's inability to deliver dual G5 level performance in a laptop is the primary reason for Apple making the switch to Intel. You shouldn't really buy a Mac laptop at this point for such an application unless you absolutely must have the portability and can deal with the performance issues.

Yep- put that way it it's almost steam driven, but I work on the run a lot and as you say being a mac man my 17'' powerbook with 1.67Ghz and 2 gig of Ram is as good as it gets in mac land until the Intel switch - shame, I had got quite use to mac laptops burning the paint off hotel worktops!

Paul