I've done same. I'm very impressed, it's a lot of camera for not much money, great features but compact and comfortable. The manual to auto focus and AF zoom functions mentioned are very useful in low light where you want to use manual focus so that there's no AF searching but also want to be sure you're focus is accurate.
Can anyone advise how to use the zebra function?
I'm also going to experiment with shutter speeds for shooting sports. My Panny GS400 has a pre set 'sports' mode, what shutter speed would that be?
What is the 'down side' to increasing gain when increasing shutter speed. Does it introduce more noise?

Well i shot some test footage at my son's volleyball game. 1/250 seemed ok, checking it frame by frame in my nle each frame was still in focus on action shots. Trying zebra pattern, the white line on court showed with a slight zebra pattern so I dropped back 3db of gain to lose it, pretty handy function. Can't see a good reason why you wouldn't leave that on while shooting manually. The part I don't understand with zebra is marker setting. I can see the percentage increases when the object inside the small marker square is lighter. Anybody? The more I use it the more I like it!

I'm using a Behringer UB1202 with my DVC30 and am having problems. I'm taking one of the main outputs from the UB1202 and feeding it into the external mic mini jack of the DVC30 and getting a ton of noise that I can't tune out without reducing levels to the point that they are meaningless. Anyone have success using this or a similar setup?