Canon HG10 Screen Format

[bill5]

Hi,
All of my recent videos have a large black bar top and bottom, as though I'm shooting in a widescreen format. Ulead Movie Factory gives me a choice of burning in 4.3 (with the black bars) or 16.9 (which is a wider screen, without the bars). My first few videos were almost totally square, with very little black top and bottom. Here's an example:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=38YRayBBNMk
More recent videos are much more rectangular, with much larger black bars top and bottom. Here's an example:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0Pzbe6eG2Pk
I haven't deliberately changed a camera setting, but SOMETHING has prompted this change and I suspect it's a camera setting, since the clips have that appearance prior to burning. Does anyone have any idea what changes I need to make to shoot more "square" videos, without the thick black bars?
Thanks in advance for your input and assistance!

UPDATE - Canon support tells me that the camera only records in 16:9, so it must be a setting in Ulead that is creating those bars. I'm burning in 16:9, rather than 4:3 and will post results.

UPDATE - Burning in 16:9 reduces the horizontal bars significantly, when uploaded to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh0QbjSCnDU
(not my room, by the way)

Seems strange that selecting a more rectangular option (16:9) in Ulead produces a more favorable result in youtube, since their format is really square and closer to the 4:3 ratio.

[jman98]

Unless you are making VCDs/SVCDs, and nothing in your post suggests that this is true, perhaps your failure to get any help is that you've posted in the wrong branch of the forums. I guess you fixed your problem yourself, but please do be more careful in selecting a forum to post in for the future.

Ulead is a rather odd program and nothing weird about it surprises me. It's really easy to use, but it's not particularly very good.

[bill5]

There's a reason that it came "free" with the camera. I see that I did mispost. Sorry bout that.

[jackjr1]

hi bill5. i too am a canon owner using the ulead dvd moviefactory. i'm having all sorts of trouble reducing the size of those black bars when i load to youtube. do you mind walking me through your steps? such as:

- what kind of file did you export your file as? i'm guessing you exported as an avi file.
- what resolution did you select? 720x480?
- what did you choose to compress the file, if you did at all?

i am a total newbie who is desperate to get rid of those black bars. thanks

[bill5]

The best solution I've found is to select 16:9 as the aspect ratio. It stretches the images slightly vertically, but I've found this to be less distracting and noticeable than the black bars, top and bottom. Also, always select "Auto-Enhance Video", under "Enhance Video"/"Effects", as makes a huge difference in quality, particularly if shot in low light. I create a DVD. When this is done, the software creates mpg files in the following directory: Ulead DVD MovieFactory\5.6\DMF_TEMP\CvtedTitle These are of course MUCH larger than .avi files, but the quality is really good. Since I"m typically shooting short clips featuring live music performance, the youtube mulit-file uploader is perfect, so I don't have to babysit the process which would take a very long time due to the size of the .mpgs. You can take a look at some before and after videos here: www.youtube.com/billfive The "Crooked Still" vids have the big bar. The "Bawn In The Mash at the Station Inn" vids were shot and processed using the process detailed above.