Hey all, i know the dcr vx 2100 does not do 24p recording on its own. Ive been messing around with some things and found out a way that is damn close to 24 fps....its not progressive but interlaced but I found that I like it better than the really strobey 24p of the dvx100. Basically I turn on Digital effects and goto the flash effect....when turned up it makes a stobe like effect holding the image for awhile before capturing another. I found that if you turn it down all the way until its off and then just move the wheel 1 click on it resembles 24 fps very very very closely, anyone else mess with this or have any comments on this? With video 24p just captures 24 frames a second simulated because it still does a pulldown to 30 frames per second when recording to dv.

Anyone else experiment with this?

Mike

Mike! I see you discovered my dirty little secret as well! :-) I made the same discovery a few years ago with my little Sony DCR TRV20 (that I now use as a deck). It does look like progressive. Nice catch.

Wow thanks for the tip! I'll definitely be using this one!

Though when editing in post, do you use 24p settings or stay with 60i?

I had not explored with the DIGITAL EFFECT menu as I assumed it was all junk. Thank you for enlightening me.

I also explored the PICTURE EFFECT menu and saw the SLIM effect. Could this be a way to go anamorphic? Impossibe! Can't be. Probably isn't.

You can do both DIGITAL EFFECTS and PICTURE EFFECTS at the same time. I think I have some experimentation to do!

Thank you for the tip!

Robb:

You stay with 60i because that's all it is.

Yeah stay with 60i...its still 60i but the effect just simulates the look of it. There is also an illumination effect...i think thats the name...its kind of a reverse green screen effect on camera....basically it takes an image and captures it and then plays whats being seen through the overexposed parts of the captures image....can be fun to play around with.

I also explored the PICTURE EFFECT menu and saw the SLIM effect. Could this be a way to go anamorphic? Impossibe! Can't be.

I've read that people use this, but there really isn't much point. The VX already has an anamorphic setting - 16:9 WIDE on the CAMERA SET menu. The VX-2000 and VX-2100 create a proper anamorphic image, that really isn't an issue. The problem is in how the image is created. The camera just crops the image to the correct 16:9 proportion and then stretches it to meet the spec. But since you only have 720x480 pixels available on the CCD's, when you switch to 16:9 mode you are only using 720x360, which gives you a soft image.

This is the consequence of the (relatively) low resolution CCD's, and no digital effects are going to help with that unfortunately. Don't confuse the format itself (anamorphic 16:9) with the quality of the image that's being captured.

i never really use the 16:9 on my 2100. It squeezes the image down to 16:9 rather than letterboxing it. Proportions are off and things just dont look right. I always shoot 4:3 and crop in post.

There are no problems with proportions when using 16:9 on the VX. The squeeze effect is correct, and when viewed on a 16:9 monitor the proportions are fine. The problem is that resolution just isn't there, as described above.