using a Canon HV20 with Vegas

[clang]

How well do they play together, especially in a PAL environment?

I've read the Canon HV20 forums and know about the camera itself.

From various 24p/25p discussions on this forum, my understanding is that I can ignore the pulldown problems that affect NTSC - I'll simply drop my 25p footage from my PAL HV20 directly onto my PAL projects - correct?

And am I correct in thinking that I can freely use the HV20's HD 25p footage on a SD project, thus gaining the ability to zoom and pan around the higher res HD footage to a certain extent, without losing any SD sharpness?

Any other hints, tips, recommendations or warnings from HV20 users who also use Vegas?

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Yes to all, but I don't know about the SD question.

I have an HV20 and it works fine with Vegas.

[David Jimerson]

You should be able to zoom and pan around the footage, but be careful about how far you zoom in. Watch the frame size in pan/crop -- don't go any deeper than 720x576.

[clang]

Thanks all. Guess I'll be buying a HV20 today - woo hoo!

[Tainted]

I've done some pan-and-scan in vegas before using keyframes/automation to take widescreen footage down to 4x3 (not letterboxing), which is pretty much the same thing you propose. It might take a little while to get the crop/zoom keyframes and aspect ration right, but once you do, it's easy.