will HDV act pretty much the same, given the same system, on MC as it does on AXP? on my xeon 3.0 box sometimes it plays well in real time and some times it doesn't, so I have to edit in SD and then batch or change back to HDV. I'll definitely be working with HDV for a while so that's a major consideration whether to stick with avid or go to an adobe system.

                    - sasha

Whenever I'm approached with HDV footage I do everything I can to get around editing with it natively.  I will capture it and immediately Transcoded it to some non-HDV format as soon as possible.  The compression and LongGOP structure make working with it an absolute nightmare. 

So, even if you went with Adobe or FCP, I'd get away from working directly with HDV quick. 

you're right - I should have mentioned that - I do transcode to dnxhd, but it doesn't always play smoothly so I still have to do most editing in SD...           sasha

That could just be a system config issue then. 

For the record, I would edit in SD anyway... the only time I would ever flip to HD would be for reviewing or outputting.

I have edited a number of programs in HDV with no trouble at all. Two years ago I edited my first HDV program and because of some "nightmare" stories I had heard, I didn't even consider editing in HDV. I downconverted it to DV25 and then batch captured HDV at the end of the process and then transcoded that to DNxHD for final output.

But since then I decided to try just using native HDV and I have never had a problem. As I work through a project, I transcode sections to DNxHD so I would say 3/4 of the edting is done in HDV and the final 1/4 is DNxHD

I do a lot of scrubbing back and forth and have several video tracks going.

I don't know why some people seem to have a lot of problems with HDV and some like me have no trouble... must be the system config? But to those who are starting out, I would say, at least try editing in HDV and see if it causes you problems before you go through the extra steps of editing "offline" and batching at the end.