I'm doing a 24 hour make-a-movie contest tomorrow - my first one ever. And just this week I got my Sony HDR-FX1 in the mail! Yay!

Normally I would take my time, read all the intructions and test everything out before I started asking questions online. But seeing how I will be using this baby at 12:00 PM tomorrow... I could use some advice...

My first questions are:

Will my computer handle the downcoverted HD footage using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5?

I know I can't shoot and capture HD footage until I upgrade my Premiere to 2.0 and get an SSE2 enabled mobo and proc, which cureently I don't have. I only have 1 gig of memory but plenty of hardrive space. Can I capture downconverted footage to this system?

Next questions:

How do I downcovert? Do I do it as I capture or before, in camera?

Also:

Should I just shoot in DV and not fret about the above issues? Will this camera work with Adobe Premiere 1.5? And are there any ill effects on the camera from switching from normal sony mini-dv tapes to Sony mini-HDV tapes?

Thank you in advance for any information you guys can provide! I love this site! Take care!

There are so many factors regarding whether a PC can cope with HD. On the Adobe website you should find the hardware requirements.

Premiere Pro 1.5.1 (free update from Adobe website) can do HDV.

Generally, always record in HDV and if you want to just edit in SD (as the captured footage is a third of the size in PP 1.5.1), use the option in the FX1 menus for iLink Conversion.

You can shoot in HDV, and then down convert right out of camera. In either Camera or VCR mode, push menu, scroll down to the double arrow selection menu, then select i.link convert, and select on for it.

After that, everything you transfer to your computer will be DV. You will note the light on the i.link port will indicate DV. Just edit like its DV. Good luck !!

I'm doing a 24 hour make-a-movie contest tomorrow - my first one ever. And just this week I got my Sony HDR-FX1 in the mail! Yay!

You can download my book. :)

Thanks guys for the quick info! Unfortunately, the weather has literally rained on our parade (minus one literal parade). Thus the contest is cancelled. Drat!

I know I'm late in the game here, but unless you have extensive HD experience, I would never recommend getting any HD camera and running out and shooting with it the next day. I'd been using DV and SD for years when I bought my first HDV camera 3 years ago. It was like night and day (granted, it was an HD10, but still). Same thing with the FX1 a little later on.

heath