I have an XL2, and am considering moving up to the XL H1. We edit in Premiere Pro 1.5. Can you shoot in HDV and then edit in SD? Can you archive the HD footage for later use but presently edit in SD? I'm also confused about whether you would capture in SD or HD.
Thanks
Bruce Yarock

Can you shoot in HDV and then edit in SD?

There are several ways how to do this. The easiest is to use the HDV to SD downconversion of XL H1 and capture SD to Premiere Pro. Another, probably better approach is capture HDV to Premiere Pro with Aspect HD plug in, and then (after first exporting a Cineform AVI) export a DV AVI file.

Also, please note that with a reasonably fast PC and Aspect HD, you can edit using HDV and then you can export in any format you need. That way you can have really great video for a PC or an AVeL Linkplayer to play on a HDTV, and still be able to export for a "standard" DVD.

But yes, you can shoot HDV and capture DV.

If you shoot in HDV can you downconvert the footage to SD 4:3 using the H1's built in downconverting function or does it have to be 16:9?

Thanks for the info.
Bruce yarock

I have been shooting HDV for right at a year now and I am convinced it is better to use an intermediate (I use Canopus HQ and others use Cineform's codec) that not only preserves the color info native to .m2t but upsamples it to 4:2:2...there is plenty of resolution to do that with 1440x1080.What Canopus Edius does using HQ for output to a SD mpeg is it scales the original file and doesn't throw info away...when you downconvert it is DV and info is lost. The mpeg encoder has more to work with leaving it as 1440x1080. I realy believe the SD mpegs look better using the native res instead of downconverting....think of it like making web video...the better the file to start with the better the down-res version looks.