DV as a codec is actually much easier to edit than HDV as it’s itself “iframe” codec – ie. it keeps every frame separate and doesn’t compress across frames. HDV does, and thus requires a lot more computing power to play it back and edit in real time. HDV is not like a DVD stream, it’s just MPEG2 compression, and when pulled in over firewire becomes a regular QT movie. Okay, so DVD is MPEG2 as well but it’s a wrapped up vobbified MPEG2 at a substantially lower bitrate and there’s really no sense in comparing them.

All current macs and laptops shouldn’t have a problem working with HDV quicktimes – the problem arises when you want to overlay processor heavy effects and transitions : that’s when slower macs will start grinding down.

It sounds as though Apple’s “iFrame” codec might be a variant or version of the newly announced low end ProRes422 codecs. These are all “iframe” codecs and thus require less processing power.

If iFrame really is only 540 I find it bizarre that Sanyo would advertise HD cameras which then feed in pictures at a resolution LOWER then even SD (PAL SD is 576 lines).

Non square pixels are a pain I agree but if you do anything in HD that’s not full raster (ie. 1920*1080) or anything that ends being seen on a TV / DVD you’re going to have to deal with rectangular pixels at some point.