which project setting?

wingfan · Member Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Location: Canada

i just came back from a vacation which i used both a Sony miniDV camcorder (shot video at 16:9) and a digital camera Canon 570IS (shot video at it's highest video quality 640, 30fps).. now I would like to transfer these videos to my PC using Sony Vegas 8 PRO and do some editing, question is which project setting should I use for Vegas?

guns1inger · So Very Tired Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Location: Miskatonic U

You have two problems

1. You have a mix of framerates. The mini-DV shoots at 29.976 fps, while the still camera shoots at 30 fps. Over time this could introduce a small amount of audio delay. It may not be noticeable depending on how you cut.

2. You have a mix of formats. To deal with this you have four choices.

a) Create a 16:9 project so that the DV footage remains widescreen, and fit the 4:3 centre screen so that on a widescreen TV it is pillarboxed, and on a 4:3 TV it has borders all the way around

b) Set up a 4:3 project in Vegas, let the 16:9 material letterbox while the 4:3 fills the screen.

c) from 60 lines form the top and 60 from the bottom of the 4:3 material, then resize it back up to 720 x 480 so it becomes 16:9 footage. It will most likely result in the cropping off of heads in some scenes, but all the footage will be 1.78 : 1
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wingfan · Member Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Location: Canada

thanks for the info guns1inger!