I was with a buddy last night who was editing together some widescreen footage he shot over the weekend. He shot the footage using a Sony FX1 an a Panasonic DVC30 that I had loaned him - both cameras set to record in widescreen.

I have to admit that I had never used that camera for widescreen so I was baffled. Anyway, when he captured the video and went to edit it he found that the DVC30's video was about 25% smaller than the Sony (both shot in HD.)

He had to scale up the footage in Premiere to get it to match up but the quality suffered a bit. Also when he scaled it up he lost a portion of the top and bottom of the video.

Is this normal or did he do something wrong? Is Premiere the best was to "scale" up video or should he have used something like After Effects?

Thanks for your help...

Not quite sure what you're saying here Wiliam, so to back-track slightly. I assume that you didn't use an anamorphic lens on the DVC30, right? You switched it into its 16:9 mode before you started filming, right?

You say the DVC30's video was 'about 25% smaller'. Can you be more specific? Smaller images? How? Image in a black bordered rectangle? Both shot in HD you say. How did you do this with the 30?

He 'lost a portion of the top and bottom'. You mean it letterboxed the 4:3 frame? I'm confused as you can see. You're editing HDV or have you downconverted the FX1's footage to edit in DV and match the Panasonic?

tom.

I'm sorry - both were shot in SD (not HD). There was no special lens used and the aspect conversion is set to letter box.

Here is a screen shot I took after importing the files into After Effects. Sorry it's not the best shot but I hope you can better understand what I'm saying.

http://dienamictd.com/screen_shot.jpg

I just layed the DVC30 footage (his driveway) on top of the FX1 footage (his car). You can see that the DVC30 footage is "smaller." Now the properties are the same as both are 720x480. But the DVC30 indicates it is a 0.90 while the FX1 is 1.20.

I figure this is the pixel ratio but I'm not sure how to fix it so that they match.

Thanks again for any help!

Well, 30 seconds after I posted the above I think I figured it out. I must of had a dumb a@@ attack or something.

I just interpreted the footage in AE to 1.20 and voila.

You will get better results using "stretch" on the DVC30 instead of "letterbox" for 16:9, give that a try.

Mike