This subject has been discussed to death in various threads.

cody, that's a pretty concerning issue, because i think one of the selling points of the HV10 is its use as a deck, esp. with playback of progressive images from the forthcoming XH series cams. definitely, not all cameras seem to be created equally in this regard. i have a little canon ZR100 for dumping DV files, and it captures like a champ, whereas my GL2 shows exactly the symptoms you are describing. i wonder if this issue is characteristic of particular models or if it's something going on within the individual cameras?

I primarily bought this as a deck for my soon to arrive A1. So, this does concern me.

But, I am new to HDV production (a veteran of DV) and will do some serious testing this weekend. I will post my findings based solely on performance of this camera and its deck potential. In the meantime, can somebody clarify whether this flakey loading issue is an HDV thing or a camera thing?

Cody, to test if it's the camera losing stuff, or just your software interacting poorly w/ HDV, set the HV10 to "DV Locked" mode for the DV output (p35 of the manual) before you connect to the pc via firewire.

This will make the camera act in DV camera/deck mode, as far as the PC/software can tell, even if the on-tape footage is HDV format.
The video will be down-converted to DV size, and it does output the DV metadata eg timecode/timestamp data correctly, at least as far as my quick testing w/ Ulead MSPro8.

Thanks Colin, I will try that along with some other things I have devised. I shall report back.

Cheers!

component capture?
 

Does someone have the ability to capture from the camera's component output (if it exists)? I'd like to see the quality of that video.

Is there any software for the mac that captures a firewire input as .m2t ?

(I have iMovie / FCP )


Cheers.

When I captured this footage with FCP in HDV108060i, the files came in without a suffix. I just added '.m2t' and they worked great.

Field Test
 

I am convinced this is a great little - no make that tiny - camera.

I did captured about 4 hours of DV footage without a single hiccup. The little camera performed well. Not a single drop or timecode violation.

The HDV capture is still fuzzy, but so far I have been able to work around it's drawbacks. I am fairly convinced that the HDV codec trying to cram so much information in to a DV size stream is the culprit.

I can't express the stunning clarity this tiny little camera is capable of. Its miniscule exterior makes it ideal for casual verite style shooting.

The mic issue is kind of sucky, but come on, 15 years ago you would have been using a NAGRA and that was professional. The sound coming with sight is a recent addition to the filmmaker's arsenal how quickly we forget.

The issue of whether something is professional or not is ridiculous. I am a professional and I think this camera has a great future as part of my arsenal of tools. Don't worry yourself so much about whether something is considered professional or not and instead focus and taking advantage of all the means at your disposal. OK, I am off my soapbox.

Thanks guys. Cheers!