Graeme...thanx for the clarification. I didn't realize RGB16-235 was for all of CCIR601.

Sean...Adam Wilt, who I consider quite qualified, says on his website not to use setup on any DV camera. If you read his logic, it's quite sound. According to Adam, many cam makers erroneously apply setup(via a user selectable switch) to the DV recorded signal. Perhaps they've gotten smarter in recent years and fixed this error. If you have access to DVRack, it would be a simple matter to connect your DV camera and study the waveform monitor as you switch SETUP on and off. I've satisfied myself with my XL2, that dialing the setup slider does, indeed, change the black level only, above and below 7.5 IRE. For shooting to digital output(e.g. for the web) I'm losing overall bandwidth in the blacks, by setting my setup above 0. For ultimate conversion to DVD (US NTSC), setting my IRE above 0 results in muddy looking blacks on my own system(JVC settop player outputting to a Sony 32" WEGA).

Your Sony camcorder, if you set it to add setup produces a DV tape which uses the 32-235 range for video, which is not CCIR601 standard and will be incompatible with any NLE. Just imagine what happens on a dissolve when the NLE expects black to be at 16 but you've got it at 32 - your dissolve will no longer look right. The analogue outputs on the camera will have their black still at 0IRE (as they translate code 16 to 0IRE), but it will look like the black on the tape is at 7.5IRE but really it's grey that looks like 7.5IRE black, if you know what I mean.

Basicially, if you're in an all digital environment, never add setup in your camera. If, for a project you're hooking the s-video, say, output of your DV camera to a production switcher and you're switching against cameras that have their blacks at 7.5IRE for real, then, if you don't have a spare proc amp, flick that switch on the DV camera to make life easier for you, but any tape you record while it's flicked is non-standard and indeed, sub-standard on quality.

Sean, you can't talk about digital being at 0IRE. There is no IRE in digital. In digital we have to talk about black being at, say, code 16, which is correct for CCIR 601. Sorry to be pennickity, but to say that a digital signal is at an analogue level makes less than no sense at all, even though I know exactly what you mean.

Graeme

All I can say, after reading this long thread, is that you guys have confused the hell out of me!
I have just bought a PD170, and it has a menu item called "SETUP", with options of 0% or 7.5%.

Which should I select for making videos that will be distributed as DVDs in the U.S.?

0% is the correct answer. That's for a number of reasons:

a) you're using an all digital workflow so setup doesn't apply anyway.

b) the PD170 doesn't add setup correctly. It burns it into the digital signal making the DV video have incompatible digital levels to fake North American legal analogue black levels.

Graeme

Thanks for the clarification Graeme.

Best Regards,
Pete