how to understand what settings to use for capturing

[Fking]

I have a pal handycam (canon 830i)
Recently I'm just using it to capture (via firewire) dv tapes from different sources (means the tapes are from different cams)

How to understand what's the best settings to capture the video, PAL or NTSC, 4:3 or 16:9, what resolution?
Currently i cant ask all the sources in what format they were filming, so im on my own to figure out the best way to capture the videos.



Btw, what happens if its recored in 4:3 but i capture it 16:9? Or the other way around?
or NTSC instead of PAL?

[redwudz]

If it's from a camcorder over FireWire, that's a direct digital transfer from the tape to your PC hard drive in realtime. IE, a one hour tape will take one hour to transfer. You will end up with DV-AVI format on the hard drive. There are basically no 'settings' involved. WinDV works well for this.

[JohnnyMalaria]

It is what it is.

All* DV capture software just dumps what it is fed from the camcorder. All PAL DV (i.e., 4:3, 16:9 and other rarer aspect ratios) are 720 x 576 and all NTSC are 720 x 480. The bitrates are identical and constant - about 25Mbps (or 13GB for one hour).

*A notably expensive editor is dumb enough to try to stuff a PAL DV stream into an NTSC DV file if the project settings are for NTSC. I shan't name names....

[Fking]

thanks

btw there is NTSC 720 x 480 in 16:9 as well, right? or just 4:3?

Because i just found that it has captured one of the videos in NTSC 720 x 480 but 16:9

i also have some in NTSC 720 x 480 but 4:3?
How the different aspect ratio doesnt change the resolution?


JohnnyMalaria, i hope you dont mean Ulead VideoStudio, because that's what im using

[Fking]

on start UleadVideoStudio has "16:9" check box
is it possible if i have checked it, ulead to force the capture in 16:9 even if the source is 4:3

what if the source is 16:9 but that's not checked?

uh i got really confused, sorry for the dumb questions, but i really need to clear that out

[JohnnyMalaria]

For NTSC, all DV is 720 x 480. It doesn't matter whether it is 4:3 or 16:9. If you display the video on a (traditional type) television, the television will make the horizontal size of the video fit the width of the screen. If the television is 4:3, the image will be 4:3. If it is a widescreen TV, the image will be 16:9. Likewise, the original camera will have either 4:3 or 16:9 imaging. Irrespective, it gets squished into the 720 x 480 shape.

What is needed is a way for the TV to display the image with the same aspect ratio as the camera that recorded it. For DV, it is simply a digital flag in the data stream that carries information such as recording time/date etc. That is all that differentiates a 4:3 DV signal from a 16:9 one.

When captured, that flag is preserved and most editing software can tell which it is. Some can't and you have to tell it what to use. If your editor is configured for 4:3 and you capture 16:9 using the editor's capture tool, it is common to specify before capture whether the video is 4:3 or 16:9. That way it can handle different types together properly.

I'm not familiar enough with UleadVideoStudio to know exactly how it manages 4:3 vs 16:9. If "on start" you mean when you start the program, you are telling it whether your project is 16:9 or 4:3. This determines the *output* rather than the input and how to deal with added transitions, text etc. A circle on a 16:9 image looks different that on a 4:3 one when both are viewed as 720 x 480, so the software needs to know.

I suspect with your software that if you have 4:3 footage and you bring it in to a 16:9 project then it will treat it as 16:9. i.e., it assumes all your video is the aspect ratio of the project. I may be wrong, though. Some software can mix-and-match 4:3 and 16:9 within the same project.

(BTW, I was refering to a different company's software....)

[Fking]

you were extremly helpful, thank you!