Widescreen

[cigarsmoker]

Ok,

its me again. Just wondered if anyone else can get there head around recording in widescreen mode.

I have a Sont DCE-HC30E camcorder and there is an option to record in widescreen mode.

Looking at the screen when recording you just get the standard black bars. When viewing the same scenes in 14:3 and 16:9 (widescreen) there seems to be no diffenence. IE you loose picture and gain no benifit from seeing more width.

Is this just me being stupid or is there really no point to shooting video in this mode.

I apologise for anoying you all again in such a short space of time.

But i am very confused!

promise no more questions for a while.................

[scottb721]

You are probably better off shooting full screen then later if you decide a clip should look like a 16:9 add some black bars yourself.

[thecoalman]

It depends on how your cam shoots the widescreen, some have different settings. Most use anamorphic (look it up in the glossary) Some just add the letterbox (black bars top and bottom) to the video which is useless. If that's the setting your using change it or don't use it. Now taping in true anamorphic widescreen is fine since your using the full resolution of the cam. Anamorphic uses 720x480 just like 4:3 but at a 16:9 ratio.

Here's an example of anamorhic:


Notice that they appear slightly stretched vertically. For this to display properly on a TV you can't connect your cam directly via RCA jacks (at least on the cams I've used) but S-video output will work (on my cam). So essentially you can't view it properly until you get it to DVD, When your capturing you have to specify it's 16:9 video otherwise the capture program will flag it as 4:3. You need to make sure you keep the 16:9 flag throught out the editing and authoring process. Your DVD player sees the 16:9 flag and adjust the video for the correct aspect. Letterboxing it for a 4:3 TV and displaying it full screen on a widescreen TV.

BTW personally I shoot all my footage in 16:9 since we'll all be using widescreen TV's in the near future. If you use anmorphic you have the absolute most resolution your cam can provide. You can shoot in 4:3 and crop the video but your going to lose a good part of the resolution.

[vhelp]

I would add also, that with anamorphic, this is the better route
to take w/ cams that offer 16:9 mode filming, when using the
anamorphic method.., unless the give cam is cropping and
then anamorphic'izing the final video. In that case, I would
assume that you'll see artifacts in your video (mostly in the
horizontal (ie, "____" = horizontal, and " | " == diaginal)
I think.

OT here..

I'm not sure if the Canon ZR85 produce good picture quality in
this respect (it does it with anamorphic) but the video
cam I was testing did not show *ANY* artifiacts in the image I
was testing with at the time (yesterday) and switching back and
forth (this cam allows WYSIWYG of this feature 4:3 vs. 16:9)
I could not tell any such issues. On my Canon ZR10 cam, I could
tell the difference and see it on screen.
.
So, perhaps the ZR85 does this 16:9 thing correctly. Maybe the
only cam that does.

Anyways.

-vhelp 3066

[BSR]

Check out my last post of links on this thread:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=217561&highlight=widescreen

That adam wilt link explains it well
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-etc.html#widescreen

On your specific camcorder, I would say stay with the full screen for best quality.