widescreen video not recognized as such

[chief1972]

I have a JVC digital camcorder and I have been recording video in widescreen for a year now. My computer (Vista) has never recognized it as widescreen but this has been alright as I can make it such in my video editor. This is a little bit of a pain as I have to do this for every single clip. But one of the clips is actually recognized by my computer as widescreen and it plays as such in media player, my editor without modifying it, and the thumbnail shows it as widescreen. But only this one clip is this way. All other clips are compressed into the 4:3 format.

My clips are saved with the .MOD extension.

WHy is this clip different? There has to be something I can do to get all others to be recognized as widescreen. Any ideas?

Thanks

[edDV]

What editor do you use?

[chief1972]

vegas 5 and the trial version of vegas 8 atleast for the next few days. I can get it to work fine in my editor by changing the atributes of every single file. Windows media player and all other players don't recognize it as widescreen.


Only this one clip for some reason out of about 100 clips I have shows up in my thumbnail, players, and editors as widescreen. None of the other clips do.

I had resorted to just changing the attribute in every single clip but now this makes me think that I should be able to get all of them to just be recognized as widescreen.

[chief1972]

I take that back...Nero showtime recognizes it as widescreen. THis is the only one.

[edDV]

Just change the file properties in Vegas.

[chief1972]

I know that I can change the properties in Vegas. I can change the properties of the project but it just boxes in my video files unless I change the properties of every single one in Vegas. This is what I have been doing for every single clip I import which is tedious but manageable.

The problem always existed that the thumbnails on my computer for each video clip was squeezed into 4:3 and media player and other players besides Nero showtime squeezes the recorded clips into 4:3.

Again...since I usually created dvd videos before watching not a big deal.

But then I have this one recorded video clip that works just fine. It is recognized on everyones computer as widescreen, thumbnail shows in widescreen, and all players play it in widescreen.

Any other ideas on how to get the computer and players to recognize all my videos as widescreen?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Are you capturing the video as DV format AVI files?

If so, you can open them in our software (below) and see what aspect ratio is stated in the DV stream itself. If they all show up as 4:3 except for your one clip then your camcorder is doing something odd.

If the videos really are widescreen (so looked squished), you can use the same software to change the flag in the DV stream to widescreen. It doesn't do anything to the video - it just sets the right flag so that other software will know what to do with it. If this does work and the problem you are having is a frequent one, you can capture with the same software and correct the flag at the same time.

Most decent software deduces the aspect ratio for DV not from the AVI file header but from the DV information directly.

[chief1972]

Sorry that I'm not up to speed on the terminology and practices but I'll try my best. I don't beleive I'm actually capturing it as you mentioned. My camcorder is a hard drive camcorder and I just transfer the files directly from my camcorder to my computer through USB.

What you described about the flag and where the information is makes sense. Yes...it is actually widescreen and appears squished in the players and thumbnail, and in Vegas until I changed the properties in Vegas for each clip.

Should there be a widescreen flag in the AVI header as well as in the DV information? I wonder if my camera sets one or the other but not both and if Nero showtime could be reading one while media player, Vegas, and others are trying to read a different flag that is not there.

When I get home I'll try your software and and see if I can change the flag and all works well.

If this does work then does this mean that my video camera is not setting the flag correctly? And is there a way to change it. I'll verify this before I really start asking more questions I guess.

Thanks a bunch

[edDV]

My camcorder is a hard drive camcorder and I just transfer the files directly from my camcorder to my computer through USB.

That is the problem. You don't have a DV/HDV format camcorder. The file is imported as standard MPeg.

Maybe if you try File - Import and use the DVD camcorder disc menu, you might get it to recognize widescreen.