Hi, I'm trying to help a student with her HF20 -- what a lovely little camera! -- but we can't figure out how to change the frame size. It is currently set to 2560 x 1080 which seems waaaay too big. Where is the setting to change it back to 1440 x 1080 or something more compatible with FCP?

Thanks!

I believe the setting you're referring to is only for still pictures.

For video, the resolution is 1920x1080 with the two highest bitrates (24bps and 17bps), and 1440x1080 for all lower-quality bitrates. The resolution cannot be changed independently of bitrate; in other words, you cannot capture 1440x1080 and have it encoded at 24bps. Check Page 47 of your manual.

Thanks for the reply. In FCP, the dimensions for the video definitely read "2560 x 1080." The video is SUPER long, like cinescope back in the 50s... very odd indeed. We've looked through the manual and can't find anything about changing dimensions.

We'll try to change the bitrate/quality and see where that puts us.

If you are in video mode, that would indicate that FCP is incorrectly interpreting the footage - so you'll need to look at the software rather than the camera. As the previous poster said, the camera's video format is 1080x1920 fixed.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for all the advice, fellas. I'll let the student know and we'll be more careful when importing the footage next time.

Corey, when in doubt use - MediaInfo (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en) - it'll tell you everything about your clips and identify where the issue may be (my money is also on the import).