When to record HDV or DV...
 

I bought this JVC 3-in-1 combo deck for my home theater that has a DV drive/HDD drive/DVD burner. I bought it mainly just to do direct copies of my DV recordings straight out of the camera to distribute to family quickly and easily. Ptretty cut and dry and works flawlessly.
The question I have now that I have an A1 is, being that my deck only knows DV, do I have to record in DV mode on the A1 or can I still record in HDV and somehow down convert after the fact in the camera.
Pardon my ignorance, but until now I have just been a point and shoot DV shooter for just family events and things, but want to get in to it a little more seriously now.

Thanks...........JD

I'm pretty sure that your A1 is like my Z1 in this regard. You should be able to turn on "i.LINK DOWNCONV" in the menus. That will let you shoot in HDV but send standard DV out the firewire port. You should also have options for the downconversion style: "edge crop" to crop it to 4:3 or "squeeze" for anamorphic 16:9.

Now if you're using 16:9 (squeeze) mode then be sure you can set your DVD recorder to record in 16:9 mode. Some of the less expensive models lack this feature. Unless you enable 16:9 on the DVD recorder the resulting disk won't be flagged as anamorphic. This won't be a problem on a widescreen TV, but on a 4:3 TV the DVD player won't properly letterbox your footage.

Well this is a very expensive Pro deck that does just about everything but not HDV and the problem is I need to take the tape out of the camera and insert in the DV drive to dub to HDD or DVD and it is only going to be able to read a DV tape only. That is my problem.

Thanks.........JD

OK, but your question was: "being that my deck only knows DV, do I have to record in DV mode on the A1 or can I still record in HDV and somehow down convert after the fact in the camera." So I was just pointing out that yes, you can downconvert in camera and send standard definition DV out the firewire port. I'm assuming that your expensive DVD recorder has a firewire input. If not then you would have to record in standard DV mode on the A1.

Hey thanks for the input. And yes, I see a tiny firewire port on the front of the unit. So now I just need to grab the deck manual and see if I can "dub" directly from the camera as I can the DV drive.

Thanks again. I have a lot to learn with this new toy...:-)

--JD