Hye guys. I shot some footage and transfered it straight from the camera to the VCR and when I watched the footage it was streached, not letterboxed. How am I able to correct this problem? Is it done when transfered or is it purley the TV? Will it make a diffrence if I were to plug right into my tv or if I were to make a dvd first and come from that?

When you shoot 16:9 video with the XL2, it needs to be shown on a widescreen 16:9 display. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing or any of your connections. It's just that you're getting a "spaghetti western" effect because you're displaying 16:9 video on a 4:3 monitor.

Your VCR doesn't know anything about 16:9 and will simply record the video in the same way it records any other NTSC video. If the TV you play the tape back on has a wide mode and you select this then the image will be letterboxed and look OK (well, OK to the extent that VHS can look OK). If you capture the camera DV to a NLE and use the NLE's "print" to tape feature with 16:9 aspect ratio selected then the NLE will letterbox the video for you and write it to tape letterboxed. If you burn a DVD and tell the authoring program to use the 16:9 aspect ration then the DVD will play back letterboxed.

<<<-- Originally posted by Clint Comer : Will it make a diffrence if I were to plug right into my tv or if I were to make a dvd first and come from that? -->>>

Making the DVD first, then dubbing that to VHS may be your simplest option. The DVD player will then provide the letterbox. As AJ says, the other alternative is to make a letterboxed version using your NLE. This will probably require rendering, and will also generate a separate big file for the letterboxed version.

I shoot native 16:9 on my PDX-10 also, and I generally distribute the results on DVD's instead of VHS now. Aside from much better quality, the DVD player will provide letterboxing for 4:3 TV's. DVD players are becoming so commonplace there seems to be little reason to use VHS anymore. I've seen banks give them away when you open an account - I think they're the new "toaster oven"...

Thanks guys. Once again you guys come through for me and goes to show how much this board rules.

I always go out to dvd but I had to make a dub to a vhs and just make sure my connections were ok I ran a test using some 16:9 footage and noticed the change when I played it back. That's why I never noticed it before. I shouldn;t have any problems going fom dvd in the future.