DVD-CAM Photo Settings???

[calhoun]

I have a Hitachi DZ-MV238E Pal DVD camcorder which also takes digital stills. The menu regarding photos has settings of FIELD or FRAME. Can anyone explain to me what these settings actually do? I cant find information on this anywhere...

Thanks guys

[thecoalman]

Frame based would be like any digital still which looks good on a computer, field based would add interlacing which would produce a better picture on TV. Look to the left under the glossary.

[guns1inger]

Digital video cameras that shoot interlaced footage, rather than progressive, take two fields to make a frame. These fields are taken at different times (1/50th or 1/60th of a second apart, depending on format), and each field is half the full resolution (it contains every second line - even or odd depending on which field it is.

When taking stills in field mode, some cameras will try to blend the fields together, which can look very soft and blurry in action shots, or try to create a full frame from a field by blending in the missing lines.

Setting it to frame (also called Progressive on some cameras) allows it to take both fields simultaneously, giving you a much higher quality photograph as the fields blend perfectly. My Panasonic calls this "progressive mode", but only does this for stills, and does not shoot progressive video (dammit). The stills, while no match for a decent digital still camera, are noticably better when using this mode.

[calhoun]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the responses.