I thought that I'd start a series on my experiences with High Definition (HD) video recording. As you may know, I recently purchased an HD camcorder, the Canon HV10. (I just noticed that it's under $1,000 already, by the way.) I've learned quite a bit as I've been recording video, taking pictures, and playing them back.

I've broken it down into the following sections that I'm going to talk about:

1) Taking/Recording an HD movie

2) Playing back an HD movie on a TV

3) Creating an HD movie using software

4) Burning an HD home movie to DVD

Each of these has their own intricacies and I will discuss them one at a time through my experience with the Canon HV10.

First off, is taking and recording an HD movie. This step is functionally no different from recording a standard definition video on your camcorder. You just point and being shooting as you would with a regular camcorder. The difference is that the recording happens in a much higher resolution. In this case, the resolution is 1080i, meaning that there are 1,080 lines of resolution (compared to 480 on a non-HD television).

What is interesting to note, however, is that my camcorder (and I'm sure most others as well) can also shoot in standard definition mode (STD) as well as HD mode. On my camcorder, this may be changed by accessing the record menu.

I guess the obvious question is why you wouldn't want to record everything in HD if you have the capability. The honest truth is that I can't think of any good reasons. If you don't care about the quality of the video produced, why bother with an HD camcorder in the first place? Space could be an issue but it doesn't matter on my tape based camcorder.  I'd be interested to know other people's opinions on this topic.

In the meantime, I'll start documenting my experiences with TV playback for my next blog entry.

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