OK, so tommorow I am going to be doing photography for a family member(Free of course) but their video guys flaked out. I have a new HV20 that my wife will be using and the video will mostly be for putting to DVD.

The question that I am asking is should I just record in DV mode?
If so what other settings do you guys recommend? The wedding will be in afternoon and into the night.
Will I loose alot of quality going to DV instead of the HDV?

the reason I would go to DV is because I am so new to the HDV that I dont want to record it in a way that I will have problems getting into my pc and edited. I have PP2.0, Encore2.0, AE2.0, PSCS2.

Thanks, Saul

You know, DV is fine and would be an easy way to go, but if you tape it in HDV and then just set the dv output to "dv lock" it will capture in dv and you'll still have an HDV master just in case.

I used to shoot a lot of stuff in DV mode but recently I realized that HDV with the DV output locked on DV looked exactly the same if not just a little bit better and I still had a master copy in HDV for the future when it's more common.

Josh is right...

Shoot in HDV. That way their video is "future proof." You can always go back to it later.

Set the playback output to DV, capture in DV, edit in DV, deliver on DVD.

Downconversion over FireWire is a helpful feature on this camcorder!

Sweet, thanks. Learning something everyday, sometimes more than just one thing a day!!

Hi Saul -
Shoot in HD, downconvert from the camera - definitely.

Also, try to shoot from a tripod or otherwise stabilize the cam - HD cams are touchy about too much bouncing around - voice of experience... shot a wedding for a friend with a "new" HD cam (actually only shot it to check out the cam) - quickly discovered that HDV is unforgiving about too much movement!

I shoot my stuff in HDV, edit in HDV, and deliver SD with great results. Although I use an A1 and not the HV series, I figure its about the same.

I'm wondering what kind of problems you encountered with movement in HDV Dave? I've shot some fast action shots on my A1 in HDV with 60i and 1/60 shutter with no problems at all... Are you using some strange shutter settings, auto mode, or 24/30F?

1) Always shoot in HDV mode - you can always downconvert later, but you will never be able to produce a HD video from regular SD DV video!
You can downconvert on the PC or out of the HV directly.

2) HDV mode allows for greater editing/cropping than DV.
If you've got 1080 vertical lines vs. ~500, and have to crop out something, naturally HDV will let you retain more quality when the image is cropped.
eg. crop 20% off 1080 and you get about 800 lines left.
crop 20% off 500 and you've got VHS blah!

Especially important if the couple wants a zoom on a family member.

3) Prints.
You can still make decent 4x6" prints off any HDV frame, but not off DV video.
Now, you are not only the video guy, but also the backup photographer and can pull any frame off the entire video for a nice shot of whomever they want a photo of.

4) Why?
Why did we spend $$$ on a HDV camcorder only to use DV?!? =P