DV should be labelled as; FS or WS

[ForYouAndI.com]

Is DV supposed to play in FS or WS?

[Wile_E]

Depends on how it was shot. The DV format supports both widescreen and fullscreen.

[ForYouAndI.com]

The images are 720x480. Does that mean it is WS?

[gadgetguy]

It depends on what aspect ratio it was shot in, 4:3 or 16:9. 720x480 is common to both Full Screen and Wide Screen.

[ForYouAndI.com]

The camera is a Samsung miniDV model SCD23.

I copied the data to avi by firewire with Exsate DV Capture Live. In TMPGEnc the avi always comes up as FS. Does that mean it is reading the header of the avi and it is saying that the footage is FS?

[thecoalman]

Makes no difference what the resolution is, the DVD player or the software adjust the aspect according to either the header if it's a file or the ifo file if it's a disc. Here's a raw (resized) screen capture from 16:9. Notice everyone is tall and skinny. That's how it would look if played in a DVD player if the it was authored as 4:3.

[thecoalman]

Does that mean it is reading the header of the avi and it is saying that the footage is FS?

possibly the header is screwed, it really makes no difference though unless you inten on watching the AVI. Encode and/or author the AVI as 16:9 to correct.

[ForYouAndI.com]

When I burn it to DVD and play it on my tv, FS looks correct.

I couldn't test WS though because WinDVD Creator 2 did not make it right. The image was the opposite of what it should be. It put black bars on the sides instead of top and bottom!

[aanaravs]

Pixel Aspect Ratio for Widescreen NTSC is 1.2 and
Pixel Aspect Ratio for Fullscreen NTSC is .9

Run the file through Gspot and it should tell you what the video is.

[Paul Glagla]

DVdate tells you also if its 4x3 or 16x9 (widescreen)

[ForYouAndI.com]

DVdate says 4x3