Ok, dont have my HC1 camera yet, it should be here tomorrow! But what is an M2T file? Here are my questions..

Say I shot a video in HD on my camera and I want to put it on my computer. I got Premiere Pro 2.0 and I go capture just like im capturing DV but in an HD project? Then what? It makes those files an M2T file? that I can only watch in premiere until I render it into something else? And whats down converting? Is that just picking dv when you render your HDV timeline?

What happens to the video? Does it cut off the sides or what? Huh huh huh?

> But what is an M2T file?

Basically an MPEG2 file, packaged a little differently. The 'T" is for 'transport stream". Regular mpeg files are program streams.

Software that plays mpeg2 files off DVDs (e.g. PowerDVD or Windows Mediaplayer) play them if you open them manually (or change the suffix to .mpg). Many of us use the VLC freeware player: http://www.videolan.org/

>And whats down converting?

Converting a digital file to a lower resolution format. Like HD to DV, or DV to 325x288 for VCD.

> What happens to the video? Does it cut off the sides or what?

You can cut the sides off if you want. But .... most people resize the image, in the same way that you would use Photoshop to convert a large digital camera photo to something smaller for emailing to a friend.

What happens to the video? Does it cut off the sides or what? Huh huh huh?

Well my recommendation is to shoot everything 16:9 Widescreen in HDV - the default of the camera. I have this same camera and love it.

Now, having it is HDV and widescreen gives you all the options you would want - HDV Widescreen, SD Widescreen, or SD 4:3. All of this can be handled in your NLE once you capture the M2T files.

I see. thank you guys for the help! I love the camera so far. Especially in great even light like food lion (shopping center) i went to the produce section and shot some pineapples and stuff and man it was crisp!