Hi!

I am thinking of getting a HV20 to use as extra camera and tape machine.
Does it convert 16:9 HDV to 4:3 SD in camera, without letterbox?

Today I have a Canon XH-A1 which only converts from 16:9 HDV to 16:9 SD in camera.

If this works, it would shorten my workflow tremendously.

Thanks Erik

I doubt it. I'm reasonably sure it's going to be the same as the HV10 which is letterboxed as well.

You could get a Sony deck (HVRM15U) & I believe it also gives a crop option as well as letterbox during down conversion.

It irks me Canon doesn't have crop options.

Bill

What conversion are you talking about? DV out? composite video out?
AFAIK the HV10 will only do some display modification on the tv composite video out, if you change the TV Display aspect ratio to 4:3 (it should then letterbox it I think.)
It doesn't do anything in DV out, except if you set "DV Locked" for the digital out, it will change 16:9 HDV to 16:9 SD DV.
There is no way to record (or output) 4:3 HDV.

What conversion is there of 16:9 to 4:3 w/o letterboxing? you mean crop/ chop off the sides? what's the point of that?
If you are recording footage to send to SD 4:3 users, you could just record it in (4:3) DV mode in the camera to start.
If you have both users, wouldn't you capture & edit in 16:9, then render from that either 16:9 SD for widescreen users, and then render letterboxed for 4:3 users? (or crop the entire screen in the editor and output that)?
Else you have to edit twice, right?
You can also just ship 16:9 DVDs and let the user's DVD player set letterboxing acc. to their TV display aspect ration, then only need to ship a single DVD.

"What conversion is there of 16:9 to 4:3 w/o letterboxing? you mean crop/ chop off the sides? what's the point of that?
If you are recording footage to send to SD 4:3 users, you could just record it in (4:3) DV mode in the camera to start."

The point is to have all material in HDV to get a futureproof archive of high quality material. Also the footage is supposed to look better downconverted from HDV than recorded in DV according to several users here.

"If you have both users, wouldn't you capture & edit in 16:9, then render from that either 16:9 SD for widescreen users, and then render letterboxed for 4:3 users? "

I think thats what I want to do or buy a cassette deck that can do the croping immedialtly so I save some rendering time. The Sony Z1