Hi I am an absolute beginner and need help. I bought a cannon xh a1 and shot my stuff in hdv. When I down convert to sd and capture in premiere 6.0. The footage gets automatically changed to 4:# and looks very squashed. Even when i change the capture settings to widescreen it imports and edits in the timeline in a letterboxed format but still outputs in 4:3 when i go to tape. It will not allow me to change the output settings. I want to know 2 things.
1. How can i get my footage to output in 16:9 from premiere 6.0 to tape
2. Is there a way the camera can covert the footage to 4:3 when i down signal to capture or does it always still down signal to 16:9 SD.
Thanks to anyone who can help me. I am really struggling.

I kinda forget how 6.0 does things, but .... you want to be editing with a timeline that is 720x576 (for PAL) with non-square pixels to generate the proper 16:9 widescreen playback. You dont want any letterboxing applied.

Right now the non-square pixel bit is not being applied after capture, which is why the footage looks squished on the timeline. So the first step is to set up the right pixel aspect ratio for the imported footage. Not sure if that's going to be a project setting or an 'interpret footage" setting.

Once the project is fixed, maybe it will export back to tape OK?

Thanks graham thats a start for me. cheers

Hi Tim

Can I ride on this thread to ask the forum a question on Down-conversion?

I'm a newbies in video and I own XHA1 too. A moment ago, I did a test shot with the camera and capture it using Pinnacle Studio Ultimate both in HD and also down-convert to SD. I observe a significant amount of video noise appeared in the SD footages as compared to the HD's. Is this normal? Or has it got to do with the Pinnacle? Anyway to minimize or remove the noise in the down-conversion?

Advise needed. Thanks.

Rgds

Vincent

Yes, I'd like to know the best way to down convert also. Should we simply catpure/edit in HD and then export in 16:9 letter-boxed from our NLE?
-Steve

People seem to think capturing in SD is the way to go. Some programs don't do a great job down converting HDV since the fields are upper and SD fields are lower, it has to either be de-interlaced, or some type of filter/effect would be applied -which looks bad. I bring my videos into Adobe After Effects and "interpret footage" then "separate" upper fields. This de-interlaces and I render it as what ever I want.
It sounds weird that your footage is getting more noise. SD is obviously not great, but if it looks worse than your native SD there is something wrong.

But if you want your video available in HDV, then capture and edit the HDV...