HV30 as a Deck Question
 

I am planning on buying the HV30 for a deck. I have looked at the specs and do not see a firewire port on the HV30. Is there one? If not, how are you guys connecting to your computer?

Thanks,

There is a firewire port. It's covered near the battery compartment.

It has FireWire Port
 

It has FireWire Port (=IE1394).

It also has an HDMI port in the same area. A very nice feature and option for this level of camera.

See attached grab from owner's manual -- circle #13 -- click to see it big.

does anyone know if i would get better quality from importing from the HDMI output rather than the HDV/DV firewire. Ide be using it as a deck also for my A1

Not better quality, necessarily, but a better codec. You'd need a way to digitize HDMI, which requires additional hardware, but it's inexpensive as video gear goes. BlackMagic makes the Intensity, which starts around $249 USD and goes in a desktop computer. Then, you get the choice to digitize to whatever codec you choose. This is beneficial when you need an I frame codec for use in effects or other compositions, where additional rendering passes will be involved. I frame codecs are also generally less demanding on the processor, freeing up cycles to handle other stuff.

No.

Once the images are on tape, they are stored as HDV. So you can't gain quality by extracting them in a different way.

Recording live is a different matter.

If you have a means of capturing 1080p images, you can bypass the tape/HDV stage completely.

You should have no problems. I use my HV-30 as a deck to my laptop in the field.