Vegas 7 Question on Setting up a Widescreen Project

[Jeff_NJ]

Here is my situation..

I'm shooting video using a Sony HC1 camera. I always shoot in 16:9 mode. I then capture the video using Vegas.

Next, I open Vegas and use the DV Widescreen template. I then drag the video clips to the timeline.

Now here is where I see the problem. When I preview the video, the video does not fill up the entire preview window. Should it? To compensate, I have been going to the pan/crop tool and resizing it. I'm not sure this is the right thing to do, as I've noticed my video quality after rendering is not as good as I think it should be.

The other thing is, when I watch my final dvd on my tv, the widescreen is not the same size as say, when I rent a movie. Mine is much taller.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here? I think I need some help in setting up my preferences in Vegas as far as setting up a widescreen project. Maybe something was checked that should not have been.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Jeff

[vegasarian]

So you've set up your File>Properties to NTSC DV Widescreen?. Thats OK. Have you right clicked in the preview window and selected 'Simulate Device Aspect Ratio'?. If you still dont have it, open an event in Pan/Crop and Right Click in Pan/Crop window and select 'Match Output Aspect' from dropdown menu. I'd be really interested to hear if none of this fixes your problem.

[edDV]

Also, you can use your camcorder to monitor to your wide TV. I haven't set this up on an HC-1 but it works for other DV camcorders.

Under View select "Video monitor".

Connect the camcorder with IEEE-1394. Connect your 16:9 monitor to the camcorder (S-Video, 480i analog component or HDMI)

Set DV camcorder to VCR mode

Alt-Shit-4 or the preview button on the preview monitor window will toggle display from the computer monitor to the external monitor

Once you get this set up, Vegas previews in a true WYSIWYG mode.

[Cornucopia]

...Alt-Shit-4...

Funny typo!

Scott

[edDV]

Heh I was watching CNBC stock reports Aww-Shit.

[edDV]

BYW, the Belle-Nuit color bar is perfect for getting the monitor set up to proper DV levels. Unlike the Canopus ADVC-1xx, camcorders don't add the 7.5 IRE setup needed to match normal analog TV brightness so you need a custom monitor setting.
http://www.belle-nuit.com/testchart.html

[vegasarian]

........or... "Heh I was watching CNBC stock reports Aww-Shift"???.

[edDV]

........or... "Heh I was watching CNBC stock reports Aww-Shift"???.

I wish I could shift back to January.

[Jeff_NJ]

Thanks for the advice guys. I will give this a try tonight and let you know the results.

Jeff