Whats going on? miniDV, software, aspect ratio, dimensions

[vid83]

I have a standard definition miniDV camcorder.
It records at 720 x 480. If you divide these numbers it is 1.5, which I assume is 1.5:1 aspect ratio (3:2).

My camcorder can also record in widescreen mode. Canon informed me that even though it is in widescreen mode, the camcorder still shoots at 720 x 480 and then the camcorder adds extra information that tells the playback device to play in widescreen.

Now I capture the video from the miniDV tape to Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5. After I am finished letting Premiere Pro capture my video, I name it clip 01. If I right click on the clip 01 file in "My Computer" and select "Properties" it is showing the dimensions as 720 x 480 even though I recorded in widescreen mode. If I use the mediainfo software, it tells me that the video is 720 x 480. If I open the video in QuickTime and select "show movie inspector", it is telling me that the video is 853 x 480, which is approximately 16:9 (1.778:1).

If I play the video in Windows Media Player, the video plays normally as widescreen. If I open the video in QuickTime or RealPlayer, it seems to play it at the 720 x 480 (1.5 aspect ratio) size. Note that playing it in QuickTime gives me a pixellated video. In Premiere Pro, in the widescreen preset, the video in the monitor displays correctly as a widescreen video.

So what is happening? What is the actual size of my video?

What I actually want to do is size my video for uploading to YouTube but with different software doing different things to the video and providing me with conflicting information, I don't know where to start in resizing my video.

[manono]

What is the actual size of my video?

720x480. However, evidently it's got a DAR of 16:9 which says how it's to be resized at playback (480 x 16/9 = 853.33). Evidently some of your players don't honor the DAR (Display Aspect Ratio = 16:9). But I think they're probably assuming it's 4:3 and playing it at 640x480, as most DV is 4:3. Only if it were 1:1 should it also playback at 720x480.

So, for resizing to a widescreen video for upload to YouTube, choose some sort of 1.78:1 ratio, such as 854x480, 624x352, 512x288, etc. This assumes there aren't any black bars above and below the active video to crop away. And if this thing is interlaced, be very careful how you resize it. Maybe you'll want to deinterlace it first. I don't use anything Adobe so someone else can help you there, I'm sure.

[jagabo]

The frame size of a video does not directly determine the displayed aspect ratio. A video can contain a flag telling the player what aspect ratio to display at. NTSC DV is always stored as 720x480 pixels (3:2 storage aspect ratio) but will contain DAR flags telling the player to display as 4:3 or 16:9. Not all software will recognize the flag or propagate it correctly. You may have to manually override what the software thinks about the source.