I thought I had this all figured out - Final Cut Pro is what you need to edit the HV20's 24p output.

But I'm getting all sorts of conflicting information about whether the Canon is actually shooting at 24p or 60i that happens to -look- like 24p - in other words, that I might be able to settle for Final Cut Express HD, which is much cheaper.

Now I'm all confused.

Can you guys give me the heads up?

Brian, as we have been told, its true 24p, but like any 24p shot with HDV, its laid in a 1080 60i stream. It still has the look and feel of 24p when played back in the camera, or in footage capture on the computer. Occasionally, a glitch will create ghosting.

Now, with the prosumer cameras, the extraneous frames have some sort of flag encode, that the editing systems use to get rid of them. HV20 does not put flags in.

However, Cineform NeoHDV, for both MAC and PC, will handle the pulldown without the flags.. and output an imminently editable frame accurate .avi or .mov file.

FCE will only support the 24p of the HV20 using the Apple intermediate Codec and puts the 24p into a 60i timeline. To edit in a true 24p timeline you need FCP or another NLE that supports it.

Gotcha. Thanks guys.