I ended up taping in HDV and used the Canon's built-in downconverter. It was simple and the conversion seemed to work well. However. . .
I am terribly disappointed with the performance of this camera. I thought the HV20 is a really great camera so I assume something is wrong with this one. A lot of people use this camera and I have a feeling it's been dropped and/or abused. I had the HV20 and my GS300 on identical, heavy duty manfrotto tripods, less than 12 inches apart. My GS300 footage looks wonderful. The HV20 looks awful. The low-light performance was no better than the GS300, despite the big CMOS chip. There is a lot of grain/noise. The video doesn't look nearly as crisp and focused as my GS300. But the absolute worst problem is the vibration from the drums. Major vibration with every kick, while the GS300 was totally unaffected. The footage is practically unusable unless I want to pretend it's an earthquake effect. The strange thing is that the vibration was worse when it was zoomed out for a full stage shot. The vibration is much less noticeable when zoomed in. Seems backwards, don't you think?