Widescreen Problem When Capturing

[DW]

Hello everyone,

I am having some trouble capturing some footage using a Canon Elura 65 camcorder.

The footage is on a miniDV tape, and was recorded using a Panasonic DVX-100. It may have been recorded in 16:9, although I'm not 100% sure. When I play it back on the Elura, there are black bars on the top and the bottom of the image, and the image is stretched out. When I try to import this into iMovie '09 (via Firewire) the image on the screen (matte black Macbook) is just like it is on the camera's LCD -- stretched out. I have tried to change the project's properties in iMovie to both 4x3 and 16x9, but that doesn't make a difference.

Is there any way to unstretch the image? I feel that if the image is unstretched while playing back in the camera (Elura), it will be fine when importing back into iMovie. Otherwise, is there an easy/fast/good quality way of doing it once it's on the computer in iMovie?


Thank you for any help

[DW]

UPDATE:

When attaching the Canon up to the television (a standard 4x3 tube tv) via s-video, the footage was displayed perfectly (on the tv, still stretched on the camera's LCD). It was not stretched, in 16x9, with the appropriate black bars on top and bottom.

????

[minidv2dvd]

capture the DVavi over firewire. play it back. if it has back bars and looks fine it is 16/9 recorded as 4:3 with permanent black bars. if it looks tall and narrow and has no black bars it is real widescreen DVavi.

[DW]

capture the DVavi

I'm sorry, I don't know what this means.

When I capture the footage, it looks as it does in the Canon camera -- with black bars on top and bottom AND stretched out the same way (horizontally).

The only place it looks normal is on my television, as described above.

[minidv2dvd]

make a small 5 mb sample and post it here, or use a file sharing site and post a link to a larger one.