Confused by the aspect ratio coming out of my camcorder: 720x480 != 16x9

[kirilius]

Hi everyone,

I am new to video recording and recently I played a bit with some test footage from my Panasonic GS320 using different programs and players. One thing confused me a lot: I have two possible values for the aspect ratio setting in the camera: 4:3 and 16:9. I use 16:9. However the video that comes out of the camera is 720x480 px, which is 3:2. It is neither 16:9, nor 4:3.

I opened it in Sony Vegas (and the original Panasonic software) and somehow it recognized it was a widescreen and displayed it properly (stretched a bit). If I open it in some player (Media Player Classic, WMP, etc.) it shows as 3:2 by default and I have to manually tell the player that this is a 16:9 video. This is annoying, but I can live with it if only I view the footage. However I want to send my videos to other people to see and cannot count on them being clever enough to fiddle with the settings of the players. Also I tried burning a DVD and the result was a 3:2 picture again.

My questions:
1) Why am I getting 3:2 output from the camera even though I set it to shoot at 16:9?
2) Using the software provided by Panasonic (or any other), can I extract proper 16:9 footage?
3) If not, this means I need to explicitly convert it (while encoding it) to 16:9 as an additional step. Is this correct?
4) What is the typical work flow that you more experienced folks are using to download a video, cut, produce and encode for later viewing?

Thanks!

[dun4cheap]

720x480 16:9 it is not a square pixel. The reason your media players are not reading the 16:9 flag correctly and leaving it in a pan/scan 4:3 aspect ratio. Set your editor up with a 16:9 timeline, drop your footage on the time line and export it to a wmv 16:9 or even an mpeg2 16:9 or even export to a dvd. It should playback just fine.

[edDV]

This thread tried to answer this.
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic361476.html

[kirilius]

Thanks very much, so there is a display flag that has to be read and interpreted correctly by the player. If I want to send some footage to a friend it would be safer to convert to 16:9 aspect ratio without losing quality because of the stretching. Is that correct?

[edDV]

Thanks very much, so there is a display flag that has to be read and interpreted correctly by the player. If I want to send some footage to a friend it would be safer to convert to 16:9 aspect ratio without losing quality because of the stretching. Is that correct?

No, you would lose quality for two reasons.

1. H-upscale-rescale to square pixels (852x480).

2. File compression to fit email limits.

Why does your user need you to scale before send? He or his player can do it.

Easier to send a player (e.g. VLC).

[PuzZLeR]

To clear you on your first post, it's actually alot simpler that it looks. If you can do algebra, you don't have to think much more than solving for the unknown from a simple mathematical equation:

Width / Height = DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) / PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio)

It's always this way.

[kirilius]

Why does your user need you to scale before send? He or his player can do it.
Easier to send a player (e.g. VLC).

It is awkward to give people a CD/DVD and a player to install. I wouldn't install a player just to see a video. Some of my friends may not be comfortable installing and configuring players. Not to mention my elderly parents who are not computer savvy at all.

A more serious problem I found was when I tried to convert the footage to DVD using the DVD Flick tool recommended on this site. When I add a title to it, there is a setting that tells whether the title is 16:9 or 4:3. When I tell it that my footage is 16:9, the resulting DVD image turns out 3:2 again. Ultimately I would like to send my parents a DVD, which they can watch on a standard set top player without much hassle.

[manono]

the resulting DVD image turns out 3:2 again

If you're talking about the image as stored on the DVD, then of course it's 720x480 (=3:2). When you play the DVD, isn't it being resized correctly? Don't things look "normal"? Aren't round things round?

[edDV]

Every DVD you buy in the store is 720x480. DV and DVD use similar PAR and SAR.

I though you were sending them the DV file or some square pixel compression like divx/xvid.

[kirilius]

I though you were sending them the DV file or some square pixel compression like divx/xvid.

Yes that too. I want to send out both DVDs anf XviDs