Canon Vixia HG20

I just went through this with the HV30 I recently purchased.

You need to use a firewire cable to capture the Canon .m2ts HD file to your hard drive.

I do it in two ways:

1: Using a free HD capture program called: HDVSplit
http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/
This captures the .m2ts file to your hard drive exactly as it is on your camera,
without altering it.

But then to edit it, you need to convert it to an .avi or straight to an .mpg
file. I can do this, but not sure about any quality loss doing so.

2: So, I do it this way instead:

I film in HD, creating an .m2t file on tape.
I use the DV Lock selection on the camera, which allows me to use another
free program called winDV http://windv.mourek.cz
This is actually a program to capture Standard Definition files if you film in
that format.
The DV Lock feature allows you to capture the HD file, but it is saved
as an .avi file at 720x480.

From there I use other programs to create an edited .mpg file and author it
to a DVD.

I think the software Canon includes is for still image capture, but not too sure.
I use my still image camera to take stills. I really don't want nor need this
feature.

Hope this helps.

Ok...great camera; stupid user. This camera does everything I ask of it, including point out my photography flaws. As such, how do I turn on red-eye reduction. I searched the .PDF for the input, but did not find the answer.

Anyone??