The HV10, HV20 and VIXIA HV30/HV40 each can record High Definition video at HDV 1080i (1440 x 1080 via IEEE-1394 or HDV tape) or standard definition NTSC compatible at 480i (720 X 480 pixels). 720P high definition mode is not supported.

HD video is recorded using the industry standard HDV format which utilizes MPEG-2 Transport Stream (.m2t files) with 4:2:0 color sampling.

SD video is recorded using the industry standard MiniDV format which utilizes AVI files with 4:1:1 color sampling.