hey guys i'm a total noob so bare with me.... I'm about to buy an a1 to shoot a movie on and was wondering if capturing audio directly onto mini dv can adversely affect the picture quality. In other words, would less "data space" be left for chroma/luma channels if audio is taking some of it up? resulting in more noise in blacks etc. Or is the tape space already "partitioned" so to speak, so that the audio channel (im sure this is not the right term) on the tape would just be blank if no sound was recorded on it? thanks.

There is plenty of room for the audio on the tape, and no it will not affect the quality of the video being recording it to tape.

Thanks for the answer, if it wasn't for forums like these here the learning curve would be much less steep...

I'll bear with you, but I don't think I'd want to bare with you. Some guys might.

If you're really new, the camera is just the tip of the iceberg, and you might want to consider trying to find some people with experience and equipment to help you out. If you have a script and it's good, and if there's an active film community where you live, you probably can get some people to join on the project. Or, you might want to offer to help out others on their projects and get some experience before spending all that money.

Lol, i'm not planning on shooting the movie next week ; ) I plan on educating myself thoroughly on all of the technical aspects of shooting digitally before i even begin to think about any kind of pre-production. I think there is a distinct advantage in buying a camera before you know how to properly use it, and that is - if you don't, you'll never learn how to use it properly ; ) Anyways, who said i'm not working with people who are more technically proficient in such things than I?...

That's good then. You definitely don't want to get a new camera the day before the shoot.

Many miniDV camcorders support two audio formats.

One allows two tracks (i.e., one stereo pair) and is recorded at a higher quality than CD audio. Often, the camcorder's settings will refer to this as 48K.

The other allows four tracks (two stereo pairs) and is recorded at a lower quality than CD audio. (Often termed "32K" mode). Usually, the second pair is silent. After recording, you can go back and record a second audio track (e.g., a narrative).