DV to 16:9?

[lgh529]

I have read through this post, but I still have a question.

When you are shooting DV that is 4:3, would you still want to zoom in on the video after cropping the top and bottom, or don't crop in the first place?

[guns1inger]

If it is 4:3, then you gain very little by chaging to 16:9. The exception : if you have shot 4:3 in a cinema mode (4:3 but with black bars) and your target TV is widescreen, you will get higher quality (generally speaking) if you crop, stretch and encode as 16:9. This is subjective, to a degree, but IMO you will get better quality from a well encoded 16:9 than by using the fdigital zoom facility on your TV or player to fill the screen with image.