just got an hv20, have a question or two.

[dibadiba]

Hey guys. My parents are taking a 5 week trip to South America, so I did some reading and found what I thought to be the best camera for the money, so just today we ended up with an hv20! I havn't got any mini-dv tapes yet, but fiddling with the settings, it appears this thing isn't too hard to use or work with. My questions are:
1) I noticed it captures in 1080i or 1080p (24p mode), but not 720p. We have a 720p projector 10 feet from the PC I'm on right now that we use to watch HD movies and stream from the PC to it via HDMI. Naturally, 720p footage is what I need, not 1080i or 1080p. I'm technically inclined but I've never used camcorders before. Is it difficult to convert the footage to 720p? There seems to be lots of footage on these forums of 720p. Was it originally recorded in 24p mode or no? Does it matter which I record with before converting?

2) Mini-dv tapes don't appear to be extremely expensive, but they cost more up in here Canada then they do down in the states. Is there a certain brand I should be looking at? I also noticed there are 'HD mini-dv' tapes that cost MUCH more. I thought regular mini-dv tapes were fine. What's the difference?

3) Since no firewire cable is included, out of these 3, which is the cable I'm looking for? I'm guessing the 4 pin-6 pin?LINK (http://www.firefold.com/category.aspx?categoryID=120)

Sorry for all the questions. Much appreciated.

[um3k]

1. I would imagine your 720p projector is capable of accepting 1080i input. If not, it won't be terribly difficult to convert from 1080i or 1080p24 to 720p. In the case of 1080i, you would run a bob-deinterlacing filter on it (to get 60p), then downsample to 720p. For 1080p24, you would inverse telecine it (to get true 24p), then downsample it.

2. Regular DV tapes should work just fine. You should look for high quality ones, though. I'm sure you can find recommendations on this forum.

3. It depends on what type of connector your computer has. For a desktop, you'll probably need a 4 pin to 6 pin. For a laptop, you will likely want to get 4 pin to 4 pin. You should look to make sure, though, because yours might be an exception.

[Erik Bien]

I'd try a quick test: shoot some footage in each mode, then try playing it back from the HV20's tape through the HDMI to the projector. It's my understanding that the HDMI spec includes some means for the source to "tell" the projector how it should be displayed, so you might not even need to worry about it.