I am seriously considering this camera but my NLE will not support HDV editing right now. I've heard this cam also shoots great SD but is there anything to be gained by shooting in HDV and outputing thru the cam in SD vs. just shooting in SD to begin with? Will the downconversion thru the cam look better?

Thanks,
Mark
www.natureflixs.com

Starting with higher resolutions and then downconverting creates better results than recording low resolution in the first place. You can see this when you watch Hollywood DVDs. Even if they have 720x480 resolution, they still look great compared to a video recorded by an SD camcorder. This is because when you record HD you will have more information to start with. Also another big reason why recording HDV is better than SD is you can keep your tapes and you can convert all of your videos to HD in the future.

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I want a Red One but I will settle for a Red Scarlett

That's disputable, however in this case that doesn't matter because:

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I live in a PAL Country!

I found this true because down converting and recording low resolution are two different thing. You can check this with a digital camcorder. Take a low resolution and high resolution photo. Down convert the high resolution photo to the same resolution as your low resolution photo. Then blow them up. You will see that even if they have the same resolution, the picture taken using high resolution mode will hold up better than the low resolution photo.

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I want a Red One but I will settle for a Red Scarlett

Down converting and recording low resolution aren't different things, because to record low resolution the camera has to down convert (how else can it get 1440X1080 from the CCD's down to 720X576/720X480? for the recording?). I wonder whether the differences in your example come about due to different quality down converters (in camera vs. in editing software)?

So going back to the case at hand... Because all the down converting would be done in-camera either:
#1 before the initial recording ('record in SD' option) or
#2 while playing back the tape ('record in HDV then down convert' option)
I can't see how you would get a better result from either over the other (infact, because of the HDV compression, the 'record in HDV' option would probably end up worse). Hmmm, maybe someone could do some tests (which option if either produces the best image) using the A1

In any case, I think we are proving that as I said, this is a disputable matter... But also, as I said, in this case it doesn't matter because there is another definate benefit of recording in HDV, and as far as I can see, no major problems (just the HDV compression).

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I live in a PAL Country!

I agree this is a disputable matter but I don't agree the camcorder is down converting while recording SD. It doesn't need to downconvert. It has more than enough effective pixels to fill out the 720x480 frame. It just records SD. It has the capability of recording SD using DV compression. It doesn't downconvert. So you lose information while recording. You cannot reverse this. If you record HD then downconvert, since you have more information in the first place to start with, it preserves more information even if they have the same resolution.

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I want a Red One but I will settle for a Red Scarlett

I am not going to dig up all the references. Here is one which spot has been saying for over a year, maybe two years and has provided samples:

There are others if you really need them. Go to hv20.com, there are several samples and comments from several different people.

One other advantage which is also commonly overlooked is the ability to pan and crop HD and resample to SD with no loss or minimal loss of video quality.



Rich

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FireWire Survey

Downconverting 4:2:0 HD into 4:2:0 SD works better than converting 4:1:1 SD into 4:2:0 SD.

Could you please explain the context you are reffering to for when these conversions take place? Thanks

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I live in a PAL Country!

Yip, another good reason to record in HDV (though you wouldn't be able to do that until you had HDV compatible software).

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I live in a PAL Country!