Taping in letter or 4:3

[B-Twien Bytes]

Hello all,

Next January I hope to shoot another short health video in Mali, West-Africa....For this reason, I am wondering whether it is 'better' to shoot directly in letter (loosing parts of the image already while shooting), or setttings 4:3 and add the black boxes above and below afterwards?!

Who has any experience / suggestions on this topic?

I would like to give it a more 'cinema-look', that's why this question comes up...

Thanks in advance!
Ewien

[JohnnyMalaria]

I assume you are using DV with a camcorder that records natively as 4:3 and fakes 16:9 with bars.

It theory, having the camcorder add the bars during recording can yield better quality. The reason is that the entire frame has to be compressed into a fixed number of bytes. Regions of black require very little space. Adding the bars before compression leaves more space for the rest of the picture and, hence, less compression artifacts (just like a JPEG image). If the bars are added after compression, the rest of the image will be compressed to a higher extent.

Another advantage of having the camera compress it is that you will see what the video will look like with the bars on the LCD display. Doing it afterwards means the LCD will show the whole 4:3 field including the bits you don't want. You will have to somehow mark the LCD display to know the limits for the 16:9 cropped image.

Having said that, seeing the whole image including the portions above and below (where the bars will be) means to can see things that you want to avoid coming into view. A classic example is a boom mic.

You should try practising with both options. As far as the compressed quality goes, you can simply flick from your true 4:3 to the letterboxed mode while pointing at fixed view and examine the recorded video for differences in compression artifacts.

[filmboss80]

Consider the fact that 4:3 TVs are not being made anymore. If you record a 4:3 video with black cropping bars at the top and bottom of that 4:3 image, it will need to be zoomed in for 16 X 9 monitors. If your camcorder does not shoot 16:9, then consider an anamorphic lens for your 4:3 camera. Century Optics makes one. This will fill the entire 4:3 frame with a vertically squeezed image that, when unsqueezed, will come out as a normal widescreen image for 16:9 monitors. Once flagged as 16:9 in an authored DVD, it will fill the widescreen TV. For a 4:3 TV, the black letterbox bars will be generated by the DVD player, but those bars will not be an actual recorded part of the 4:3 video footage.

[guns1inger]

I am wondering whether it is 'better' to shoot directly in letter (loosing parts of the image already while shooting), or setttings 4:3 and add the black boxes above and below afterwards?!

I don't understand what part of the image you are loosing by shooting 16:9. You frame your shot to include the things you need to see, and you loose nothing. When you go to the cinema, do you feel that you are loosing part of the image because you are watching a movie shot in widescreen ?

[B-Twien Bytes]

Thanks all for the explanations...

If I look at it now, shooting directly in 16:9 is better according to the people responding than adding fake ones afterwards.

Thanks for your input.

[B-Twien Bytes]

By the way: I am just thinking, you all think America / the West, where I am working and living in Mali, West-Africa....

Will that change your answers in some way?

[guns1inger]

I would still shoot widescreen . . . .