Due to a bit of misfortune, the particular 60 minute Mini-DV tape that I first put through my 
new Canon HD HV20 camcorder (see review HERE) was defective, causing many dropouts. This tape brand and quality level (Sony EX) had presented no problems with well over 300 
Mini-DV tapes used, but MPEG-2 is more sensitive to footage problems, as are some editing programs. Further, I later discovered with a thorough check of the computer's RAM that one 
of the original two 1-gig sticks was defective. I found it VERY difficult to successfully export 
a video free from defects, and here is my experience (and what I learned) using some editing programs, given the conditions above (which were eventually corrected) --

--I first edited a nine minute video using Ulead's inexpensive and basic VideoStudio 11+ 
("VS-11+"). After finishing the edit, I was unable to export the finished edit back to tape in the HV20 unless the first clip on the timeline was a "real" HDV clip (with audio and video levels turned to zero to make a silent black leader of the right format), and not just black of an unspecified format. This was necessary even with the export format specified as HDV. After export, I noticed that following many points of changed footage (just after transitions, etc.), there were some quite noticeable two frame image motion freezes followed by jumps forward to the correct timing locations in the motion streams. I now think that this was likely caused by the RAM problems I later discovered. This happened when "Smart Rendering" was selected (the "SR" feature permits export of the video with the recompression of only the footage that has been changed, speeding up the export process and potentially improving image quality by simply copying and not recompressing most of the source footage on the timeline). By deselecting "SR", the "freeze and jump" glitches disappeared, but then VS 11+  recompressed all of the footage. Unfortunately, VS-11+ noticeably softened the footage exported by it when I did this, some parts more than others (and some parts quite badly) - and the recompressed image quality was poor compared with that of Premiere Elements 4 when used with the same computer and source footage (but this softening was also likely caused by the defective RAM, which Elements tolerated better). If the editor's needs are very simple and nothing much more complicated than single-track editing is required, and if there are no hardware issues (Memtest86 is an excellent RAM checker, and other good programs and utilities can be used for other hardware tests), and if the source footage is captured with a program like HDVSplit, which shows the presence of dropped frames, and/or the captured .m2t files are checked and repaired, if necessary, with Mpeg2repair (which can find and also correct file problems that HDVSplit misses), then VS-11+ can be a good choice, especially considering its low price, its "SR" feature (and relatively fast export speed), and its ability to use proxy files (lower resolution video files) for editing HDV 
with older, slower computers. VS-11+ also has a couple of nice transitions not in Premiere. 
I did grow to strongly dislike this program's poor user interface, though - it seemed to fight me 
at just about every editing step.
VS-11.5+ has recently appeared which adds support for writing AVCHD files to standard DVD blanks (although these still require special playback facilities), and for writing Blu-ray disks using appropriate blanks for playback using appropriate playback facilities.
   (See program screen grabs here.)

--Next up for editing the video was the slightly more expensive Adobe Premiere Elements 4 ("PE-4"), a somewhat simplified version of the very expensive Adobe Premiere CS3. This program (which was used to capture the same HDV footage again) is slightly harder to learn than U-11+, but it has better help files - and much greater versatility. It also has a wonderful and "pretty" interface with continuous frame images of footage on the timeline (which make it easy to locate material), a better preview window, better previewing (at least on fast computers), and menu on/off track switching (which makes multitrack editing fairly easy - although single button track switching would have been better, as it is in CS3 and Vegas Pro 8). PE-4 has a far greater tolerance for HDV source material and computer imperfections than U-11+. Unfortunately neither PE-4 nor CS3 offers "Smart Rendering", a very important shortcoming - and the resulting recompression of the whole timeline can make for very long render times with HDV. Most of the recompressed output looked fine (even with difficult material), but it failed to recompress cleanly a few of the very detailed parts with motion, spoiling my video. If I use PE-4 again with HDV, 
I might try applying a slight amount of blur to potentially troublesome footage to minimize this problem. One can hope that Adobe will add the "SR" feature to both PE-4 and CS3. That 
would make PE-4 a really fine general-use inexpensive editing program!
Oddly, if HDV footage is captured in PE-4 (as .mpeg-2 files) and then imported into Sony 
Vegas Pro 8 and exported from that program (as .m2t files - with no recompression required anywhere), it shows more saturated colors, especially reds and purples, although the raw 
PE-4 .mpeg and the Sony .m2t (processed or not) files look the same on the Sony timeline.
PE-4 includes the ability to write Blu-ray disks directly from the program, using appropriate blanks, for playback using appropriate playback facilities.
   (See program screen grabs here.)

--On to program number three, Sony Vegas Pro 8 ("VP-8"). Sony offers three versions of 
their editing software, with the cheapest not offering HDV support, the slightly more expensive "Platinum" offering HDV support but not "SR", and the expensive Vegas Pro 8 offering both. 
Had it not been for the 30 day free trial (also offered by most other editing program makers) 
and a special deal that brought its price under $200, I would have been discouraged by its reputation for learning difficulty and by its high price - but I soon found that I liked the program enough to buy it. It is complex but VERY VERSATILE - but it can be used in a "stripped down" mode (although even then, timeline operations are somewhat more complex than with many other programs). The preview window can be enlarged to be as large, sharp, and smooth-playing as PE-4's. The many effects can be key-framed and adjusted in many ways using identical and logically arranged pop-up windows that change to their optimum sizes when you double click on their header bars. One quickly becomes impressed with how logically and consistently-designed all the many options, adjustments, and controls are in this program, unlike some others. VP-8 
has excellent searchable help files and online instructional tutorials, accessed by double clicking 
on icons on the header bar. For anyone who thinks this program is not versatile or aimed at professional users, I suggest dropping the word "titles" into the help search - or under "Options", selecting "Preferences". The results and their many possible variations can be overwhelming! The program also includes unusual options like the ability to edit in 32 bit color and to record and 
edit in 24 bit 192 KHz sound. It even has four 'scopes built in for checking various video characteristics. VP-8 has some fine transitions not present in the other editing programs I've seen (and, remember that they can be keyframed - so something like a soft edged wipe can rotate and change its softness with time, for example). VP-8 is set up for professional level work in both video and audio - and its interface is excellent and can be customized to your liking (but, oddly, if the "candy-color" Windows XP graphic scheme is replaced with an older-type custom scheme, as I prefer to do, the bottom control bar in the timeline turns black). With VP-8, I easily and successfully cut my raw and PE-4 files together and exported a (technically, at least...8^) good file to tape. The export process can preserve the .m2t file, which can be used at any time to export the video with the program without needing to preserve the original project or to recompress the file (unlike Premiere), a nice feature. Scary at one point was the appearance of red frames on the timeline (indicating defective frames) after I had already edited out defective areas I had seen while looking at the original (defective) tape and while checking captured footage in VS-11+ and PE-4. These red frames would come and go mysteriously, but they did not appear as black frames at export (except for one black frame in the second of three videos), as the program help files (and a Google search) indicated they would (whew!), but they did portend future problems (and an eventual solution...).
During the editing of my second video, I discovered an unfortunate characteristic of VP-8. When capturing HDV, the automatic splitting of clips did not work very well (VP-8 generally left three bad frames to the left of the split and two to the right, which needed to be manually removed). The automatic clip splitting in VP-8 can be disabled by selecting that option in the capture window preferences, but then one is left with having to split clips manually. Using PE-4 for capturing and splitting clips doesn't work, since the split clips are not "real" unless recompressed individually and exported (with damage to the image quality, so one may as well edit in PE-4 if one is going to do this...). Also, as noted earlier, capturing HDV with PE-4, exporting the whole .mpeg file into VP-8, splitting it there manually, and exporting the edited video from VP-8 introduces the problem of increased color saturation at export. A program called HDVSplit, a free, versatile, well-written, efficient, and easy to use utility for the capturing and scene-splitting of HDV footage that WORKS, is available at http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm. (BTW, I did not need to get a separate driver for the HV20 to use HDVSplit, and I did not bother with the MPEG-2 viewer add-on...)  Finally, I settled for capturing HDV from within VP-8 (or with HDVSplit), with scene-splitting not selected since importing a couple of large files seemed to work well enough, followed by manually splitting the scenes (whatever works, I guess...) - but the major trouble for me with using VP-8 was still ahead (see below for more, and a solution).
Owners of VP-8 can download a free upgrade of DVD Architect to version 5, which permits writing Blu-ray disks using appropriate blanks for playback using appropriate playback facilities.

Further comments on VP-8 --
While trying to use VP-8 to edit my second (and then my third) video, I went through computer hell. Red frames and black "blink" frames galore appeared in the video on the timeline (even though both HDVSplit and VP-8 captures indicated no dropped frames in the source footage), and there were numerous crashes. I could not successfully have HDVSplit capture and also split scenes. When trying to import 70 short clips produced by HDVSplit into VP-8 for my third video, even in batches no larger than 1 to 3 files, Vegas crashed repeatedly, often taking Windows XP with  it. I had never seen anything like this. I barely got the second video out to tape (with only one black "blink" frame), but none of this gave me much confidence that I could do it again with VP-8. Nothing I tried (including reloading VP-8 a couple of times) made any difference, and no attempt to diagnose hardware or software revealed anything wrong until one very thorough RAM checking program (at www.memtest86.com) indicated a defective RAM stick. Installing all new RAM (which all then checked out as perfect) made no difference - VP-8 still crashed repeatedly. I then saved my computer files, wiped everything off the five drives and partitions, reformatted all of them (not using "quick formatting"...), ran the disk checking utility on all the drives, and then reloaded a shorter list of software programs and restored the files. With the helpful suggestions of many online and some research here (and the dumping of all software that was downloaded while I was using the defective RAM, and the updating of all hardware drivers and the MB BIOS), I was cautiously optimistic about using Vegas (although with the latest capture of the material for the third video, I did not dare to try using the splitting feature of HDVSplit, since trying to import many small files into VP-8 had caused so much trouble earlier). Unfortunately, I still had serious problems with VP-8. Roughly one in two-to-seven short renders made for the purpose of previewing and reliably preserving transitions and changed footage for the output of the final video was defective, and when it was played, it crashed the program. Following that, I needed to delete the file on the timeline and in the media bin before proceeding. The remake of the file was always successful, but it often included a repeated frame early in the file which needed to be removed. This seemed like a "kludgy" way to need to work (this assembling of bits of files and raw unchanged footage on the timeline in order to assure straight copying of all footage at output with no recompression - which is when the fatal errors would occur), but nothing else proved reliable. I know that many (Most? Almost all?) other users of VP-8 with HDV have done so successfully and with few problems, but several others have commented on problems they've had with that combination on the Vegas forum, at -- www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=601031&Replies=3, and Sony has just offered a beta fix (a new .dll file) which seems to work quite well, at --
www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=602126&Replies=7, and VP-8c may soon appear to cure this problem. After some early difficulty, I was successful 
in using the new .dll to output my third video, and now (after further testing) I have sufficient confidence in my computer, software, and VP-8 (as a system) for me to continue editing with it. 
I liked VP-8 enough to go through all the problems I've had with it (and with my hardware) to finally be able to use it - even if I must sometimes use additional small programs along with it, 
like HDVSplit, Mpeg2repair, and Trim_Captured_Clips_v1.0 (posted by "jonask" on the 
Sony Vegas forum, which automatically removes bad clip end frames on clips split by Vegas).
A copy of the Sony beta .dll file download site location, with the instructions for installing the 
file in VP-8 (plus a few of my comments), is here - and if you have been having problems with 
VP-8, it is well worth a try. It does not appear to correct the automatic scene-splitting function problems, but all other problems that some people had been having with VP-8 and editing HDV appear to have disappeared, and it does not appear to cause any new problems with this.  YAY!!!  8^)
   (See program screen grabs here.)

In summation, if you know that your HDV footage is perfect and that you are not going to 
do anything fancy (like multitrack editing), Ulead VideoStudio 11+ can be OK (and it has some advantages), but it can cause nasty results you can't recover from if the source footage or your computer has problems - and its interface is not very pleasant to work with. Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is more reliable, more versatile, much more tolerant of source footage and equipment problems, and its interface is wonderful - but it does recompress all HDV footage on the timeline, with the disadvantages that that would indicate. Sony Vegas Pro 8 combines the advantages of both (except for the faster export speed of Ulead, nicer-looking interface of Premiere, and the much lower prices of both) with a very logical interface, and it is far more versatile than 
either - but it is somewhat more difficult to learn, even for basic editing (and without the new beta .dll file installed, there is a possibility of experiencing some problems with Vegas). All of this is in reference to editing MPEG-2 HDV with these programs, with their latest updates as of June 2008 installed, using XP, a Biostar MB with an Intel chipset, a 2.4gHz Intel Core-2-Duo CPU, 3 gigs of 667mHz RAM, two 80-gig HDs plus one newer 250-gig drive split into three partitions (with no RAID, but I use three different physical drives when editing), an SB sound card, an ATI Radeon X1600 Pro video card, and an inexpensive 24" 1600x1200 LCD monitor on which all of these editing programs lay out very well (the screen grabs included here are 50% of the original size, if you have a similar monitor size and resolution). Nothing used here is "bleeding edge" or very expensive, but this gear *should* be more than adequate for use with any of these programs.

So, there you have it...!

COMMENTS ON CONVERTING MINI-DV TO HDV --

Having much Mini-DV material, and quite a few edited videos in the same format, but also 
being impressed with how much better good HDV can look (even from relatively inexpensive 
1-chip HDV camcorders, the excellent Canon HV20 - HV30, when compared with one of the best Mini-DV camcorders, the 3-chip Sony VX2000), I was hoping to find a practical way to upsample my Mini-DV footage to look at least reasonably good on a sharp 42" 1080p LCD screen, viewed at 6.5'. I had noticed that standard definition DVDs made from Mini-DV often looked somewhat better on that screen than did the original Mini-DV tapes (the DVD player 
I use has 3 connections for the video output, but it is not progressive scan - but DVDs did noticeably reduce stair-stepping artifacts, the bane of Mini-DV). SD also looks good on my 32" 720p LCD, although good HD material doesn't look as good on it as it does on the other LCD. In Premiere Elements 4, I used some good Mini-DV material to edit and export a 4 minute 
DV-AVI file. I used the same material to also export an MPEG (DVD) file. I then deinterlaced the source material and again exported DV-AVI and MPEG files. In PE-4, I exported an HDV .m2t file with all of these versions in it to the camcorder and compared them on the 42" LCD. The Mini-DV AVI file converted to HDV using PE-4 was acceptable (although it was somewhat soft, with some slight stairstepping still evident with motion on contrasty edges), but it was not what I was hoping for (well, I admit it - I was hoping for a miracle, although I already knew that one cannot create information from what was not there to begin with...). The MPEG file looked slightly softer yet, and generally less attractive. I bothered looking only at the deinterlaced Mini-DV to HDV footage, and it was the worst. I then tried converting and exporting the Mini-DV file as HDV using Sony Vegas Pro 8. Compared on the timeline, its converted footage looked wonderful. But, sigh....! On tape, on the TV, it *was* sharper than the Premiere processed footage (and when there was no motion, the image looked quite nice), but with motion, the  stair-stepping was unacceptably ugly. I did not check the following carefully, but my impression is that Mini-DV processed in Premiere Elements 4 to become HDV looks perhaps a tad better than footage converted to SD MPEG, put on a DVD, and then viewed on the same HD TV (which upsamples everything put into it to 1080p), although it was somewhat (but not too unacceptably) soft...

(More updates coming...)

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