Does anyone know why I can't control audio levels on the Panasonic AG-DV2000 when dumping to tape via firewire. It is automatically controlled and luckily has never produced hot audio. I can control levels manually when playing through the breakout box. Is this standard for all DV decks.

I've never seen a deck with audio level control for audio sent as an embedded part of the video. That is, in fact, the real reason for no control.

The audio is recorded as a digital stream embedded in the video. It would require decoding the digital stream, processing the audio and reinserting it into the stream with no delay if it were to keep its place in the data stream. With DVCam, that might be extremely important.