We recently purchased a Canon HV-10 to do home movies and the like and last night was the first attempt at burning what I filmed to DVD. The results were less than ideal. Direct connect to our HDTV playing back direct from the camera produces an obviously beautiful image (1080i). When I went to burn, I had to switch the cameras output setting to 480i because our Sony DVD burner won't recognize 1080i. This is understandable, but odd to me. I would expect the DVD burner to except any signal and then down convert. Image quality suffered, which I get. My problem is during the burn and subsequent playbacks, the DVD stutters like crazy and there are artifacts all over the place. What am I missing? I haven't been happy with the Sony and I'm guessing that's the problem. So my next question, should I try a different component DVD burner or invest in a good PC setup? I want to be able to film DVD quality movies (as close to what my mad skills will allow anyway), what will produce this? Sorry for the long 'blah blah blah'.

Oh and an FYI, the Canon is unreal. Audio is a little suspect (stupid mic location) but the video quality more than makes up for it.

I would strongly suggest going the PC route if you feel that you are willing to spend a bit of time on the learning curve.

Get a decent video editing package (I use Ulead Media Studio Pro but loads of choice out there) and you can capture, edit and make nice titles in no time at all. The pleasure you get from watching a mildly edited home movie compared to all the in-camera cr.p has to be seen to be believed.

I am afraid that DVD recorders are not the way to go since they convert DV to normal NTSC (or PAL) and then encode to MPEG2 - a huge drop in quality compared with 1080i. With modern editing suites you can stay in native HDV until you come to make your DVD (which of course can also have nice menus, chapters and the like - multi-angle is for lesson 2 :-)

HTH
Andrew

I am not familar with Macs but I thought they handle video better than PCs too.

you can connect directly to the TV?? Then just play the HD content from the computer...

than typical PCs especially with the canon HDV codec.
just get a mac and iMovie. should be fine with that. you shoot and edit all in HD, the compress when you output to SD. It will still look amazing. but you will never get that same insane sharpness you get when going straight from the camera.

i have 2 canon XH-A1's and a G5, so my workflow and video quality/codec is the same as yours.

let me know if you have any other questions

I own an iPod does that help?

Any idea why I get the stuttering? My old Canon(7 years old) doesn't do that. Is it because the camera is down converting as it's drip feeding to the DVD burner or is it something inherently wrong with the DVD burner as you described?

Until I can get my setup complete, can someone recommend a service to transfer my miniDV to DVD?

if you start to do in depth rendering and such with LONG timelines in Native HD, you will want to go with Final Cut Pro and a bit nicer of a comp. g5 etc... But what is nice about the macs is even the lowest end ones are good enough nwo for all video editing.

or send it to me and ill undercut one of the inhouse production places that charge over 200$ per hour, not including set-up.

I suspect that the input processor in the Sony is not really designed to down convert (although it has the codec, probably in software). Converting NTSC DV to digital DV is not heavy on a processor compared to the immense amount of calculation needed to down sample.

This is just conjecture.

BTW the quality of DVD you will get out of a PC editing package will blow your mind compared to a direct copy from DV or HDV to DVD.

Also, the MAC route, although I know nothing about them, is certainly worth investigating. Final Cuit is pretty pricey but even iMovie should be fine to get started.

Sorry for long delay - been travelling.

Andrew