1) Is CyberLink PowerDirector able to capture the HDV video from my Canon HV20 camera without loss – no loss when compared to the compressed video and audio that is now on the miniDV tape (HDV format = MPEG-2 25 Mbps for the video)? What format would I save it as – e.g. when I used HDVSplit, it saved it as an m2t file which is a container format (and I didn’t know what the format of the video and audio were in that m2t container). What settings would I use?

2) Can PowerDirector create a DVD (std def) - using my computer’s DVD burner – that will play in any stand-alone DVD player?

3) How about if I had a Blu-Ray burner attached to my PC – would it allow me to create a Blu-Ray Disk - using my computer’s Blu-Ray burner – that will play in any stand-alone Blu-Ray player?

4) Given that my miniDV HDV camera (Canon HV20) already took the sensor input and has the video and audio stored in a digital format on the miniDv media, why do I have to ‘capture’ the video/audio over a firewire port? Given that we put digital files on tape for computer backups and read from the tape later on, why can’t this be done with the digital files on the miniDV tapes – a device that copies the files from the miniDV tape to the PC’s hard drive without having to do a ‘capture’?

4a) If I used a hard/flash-drive camcorder instead of a miniDV camcorder, I wouldn’t have to ‘capture’ the video onto my computer, correct? I would just copy the file from the hard/flash-drive camcorder to my PC and then can use PowerDirector to put it into a format more appropriate for editing?