Can anyone help ?

I have these old PAL DV scouting tapes recorded with a Sony DCR-PC110E which I'd like to transfer to QT. I can play them back fine on my GY-HD251 and the connected monitor (which switches to 50i) but when I record the playback via FW on the harddisk recorder set to QT, i get a distorted (squeezed) 4:3 image in QT playback (using QT7 pro).

I can't figure out where I got a setting wrong !

Correction: just realized the sequence was shot with the DV cam in 16:9 mode - but transfer via GY-HD251 handles it as 4:3 hence the squeeze. How can I circumvent ?

I hope I'm wrong but I don't think you can circumvent this within the JVC camera. It's probably not reading the pixel aspect ratio right. Is there a menu option that will allow you to set this?

DVCAM in 16.9 has the same horizontal pixel count as 4.3, in PAL it 720. When your bring this into an NLE you set it as "Anamorphic" which stretches the pixels from square to rectangular.

Quicktime can't figure this out. To see your video in the correct aspect ratio in Quicktime open the file.
In the menu bar open Window > Show Movie Properties > go to the "Video Track" and unclick "Preserve Aspect Ratio" and change the 720 setting to 1024 and hit Return on your keyboard. You should now see Quicktime in 16.9.

When you close the video in Quicktime it will ask you if you want to "Save", do not save the new setting if you are going to edit the footage in an NLE.

If you are editing the footage just bring the files into your editor and set them as "Anamorphic"

This is a wonderful site ! Thanks a lot - works like a charm with anamorphic in FCP !