Hi There,

Just got my HV20 last week and could not be happier.

I do a lot of impromptu shooting of my kids which means I like to have my battery always charged for on-the-go shooting. Because it charges in the camera, would it be okay to always have the camera plugged in and charging while not in use? Will this hurt anything? Battery Life? Any one have experience with this.

Okay, I'd like to burn Standard Definition DVDs with a DVD recorder not hooked up to a computer. The reason is, my Mac will spend 12 hours to burn one DVD. I'm thinking a DVD recorder will work much faster. Am I wrong? Also if I burn to a DVD, will it display my 16:9 footage correctly on my 4:3 standard def TV. I know when my Mac Burns the DVD, it codes the DVD so the proper aspect ratio is displayed no matter what kind of TV you watch it on. Do Stand Alone DVD Recorders do this too?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

I did some googling to find out if there are any DVD Recorders that allow you to turn on or off the anamorphic tag but couldn't find anything.

I know you can send the video out the composit jack of the HV20 as either anamorphic or letterboxed which is actually a really nice feature. So if your DVD Recorder doesn't have an anamorphic tag ability you could record the a letterboxed version at least.

When I'm home & not shooting, I typically have my camcorder mounted on my tripod and sitting near my computer with the firewire cable plugged in at both ends and the power adapter plugged into the camera at all times. I turn the camera off of course when I'm not using it to shoot or capture tapes to the computer. I have done this with all my camcorders and have never had an issue. That said, I've purchased and used stand alone chargers and extra batteries from day one. I wouldn't ever want to be in the field without spare charged batteries to use. I've purchased the elcheapo's from eBay without any problems. Since they were so cheap I purchased several chargers so I can charge multiple batteries at the same time.

I purchased a Sony standalone DVD recorder about 8 months ago with the intention of using it to record directly from another standalone VHS tape player and record a large library of mini vhs tapes to DVD. Of course this process will create a library of unedited videos but at least I have preserved hours of family videos that span about 15 years. The editing of all these videos will have to wait for retirement. At anyrate, I haven't actually tried to record with the DVD recorder yet. I doubt that my recorder has an HDMI interface but I know it has component. I would try plugging my camcorder into the componet in of the DVD recorder and follow the steps to play the video from the camcorder and start the DVD recording process. If component doesn't work, than try composite out of the camcorder to the DVD recorder. I don't know if HDV content on a tape will play out the composite or not. Certainly even if either one of these steps worked, the resolution would be downgraded to SD.

Let us know what the results are and which way works. This is a down and dirty method for family viewing. In the long run you would certainly want to capture your HDV material to the computer, edit & render HD files. My approach at the present is to burn HD content onto a standard 4.7 or 8.X DVD that will play in HD on my Toshiba HD DVD player. I can only put about 20 minutes on a 4.7 gig & about double on a dual layer DVD. I'm sure the goal for all of us shooting HD video is to be able to play & enjoy the HD we shoot on our HDTV family entertainment systems. Mine happens to be a 32" LCD monitor. It doesn't even have a tuner. I hardly ever watch TV so I have purchased a standalone terrestial tuner yet.

Hi John,

Thanks for the awesome response. I'm going to keep my camcorder charging at all times.

Wes, I googled DVD Recorders too. It really doesn't seem like there is a lot of clear answers to my question. I might do the letterbox thing if I have too. Thanks.

Chris

Hi John,

Thanks for the awesome response. I'm going to keep my camcorder charging at all times.

Wes, I googled DVD Recorders too. It really doesn't seem like there is a lot of clear answers to my question. I might do the letterbox thing if I have too. Thanks.

Chris

I unplug my camera and remove the battery after charging. LiIon batteries seem to hold their charge well enough that I'm not afraid I'll miss any action. They will drain however if left attached to the camera without the power adapter.

I have a Memorex stand alone DVD recorder. With my DVX 100, when plugged in via firewire it would record in 4:3 (DVX 100 is a 4:3 camera.) With my HV20, when I plug it in via firewire it records 16:9. I do have to put the HV20 in "DV locked" output mode for it to work with the Memorex (in "HDV/DV" I get sound but no picture). If you want the camera to output 4:3, change that setting in the camera. ("TV Type" page 40 of the users manual).

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your response. What's the model number of your DVD recorder if I may ask. Does it record in real-time? If not, how long. What's the quality like. I realize it's down-coverted SD, but does it look as good as SD from the camcorder?

Thanks,

Chris

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your response. What's the model number of your DVD recorder if I may ask. Does it record in real-time? If not, how long. What's the quality like. I realize it's down-coverted SD, but does it look as good as SD from the camcorder?

Thanks,

Chris

Chris - I'm away on vacation for another week and I have no idea what the model number is on the Memorex (got it from Target about 2 yrs ago). I thought all stand=alone recorders record in real time? Anyway, this one does.

Quality is quite good. I've never shot SD with the HV20 but the in-camera downconvert (DV lock) looks better than the DV I used to record on the Memorex with my DVX 100.

I ran a little test when I first got my HV20: captured HDV video in Vegas 7 and rendered to SD DVD; captured same HDV downconverted in-camera to DV (DV lock) and in Vegas 7 rendered to SD DVD; recorded same HDV in-camera downconvert (DV lock) to SD DVD in the Memorex. The first (capture HDV in Vegas and let Vegas downconvert to mpeg-2 for SD DVD) looked best but took longest to render. Second best was the Memorex. In last place was HDV downconverted to DV in-camera and rendered to mpeg-2 in Vegas for SD DVD. In fact, the last was pretty awful looking.