XH A1 HDV Preset in FCP 5.1.2, and resolution questions
 

I've been using the HDV 1080p24 preset, and it works OK.

What worries me is that the "pixel aspect" says HDV with a 1440x1080 listing.

I thought that the CCD's in the A1 were native 16:9? Wouldn't it read 1920x1080 then? Maybe I'm just a little confused. Can anyone shed some light here?

Hi Matt, they are native 16:9 at 1440 x 1080. See my article
http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php for an
explanation (written for the XL H1 but also applies to the XH
series camcorders).

Thanks Chris.
So really, the HV10, being 1/4 the price of the A1, has a better res (not necessarily a better picture, but more pixels). Interesting.

I wonder why they didn't just put in 1920x1080 CCD's? Would have made more sense it seems...

The A1 has more photo sites than the HV10 because it has three sensor panels.

The HV10 output has equal resolution to the A1, but the native sensor resolution is downrezzed to the native resolution of the HDV format, 1440x1080. So the cameras take different paths to the same resolution which happens to be the native panel size for the A1.