As for losing resolution, well, as far as I know the only way around that is a 16:9 anamorphic adapter, like the one from Century Optics. Barring that, the only way to get a 16:9 image is to get rid of some scanlines, so "throwing away" resolution isn't so bad: you couldn't use it otherwise. You lose image dimensions when you apply some sort of mask, sure, but not detail in the remaining image area.

Right. And that works expecially nice when you are only letterboxing for a 4:3 output. Well at least this discussion is making it clearer to me, what is going on...

Hey all I found this link that gets into nice detail about all the aspect ratios from film to HDTV. Here's the link


http://members.shaw.ca/quadibloc/other/aspint.htm

This one actually has a flash that shows some differences.

http://www.widescreen.org

What I recommend is to try a little of each way to test and compare. When I did this, the camera 16:9 mode looks the same as the post crop and stretch which looks the same as matting the top and bottom and cropping and stretching. No matter how you do it you end up with the same thing: 360 lines of resolution stretched out to 480 lines. As far as I have been able to see, it looks the same no matter how you do it, so you may as well do it with the camera and save the extra steps.

My main camera now is an A1, but I still find myself using the VX2000 for low light shots. When I do this, I just shoot in the 16:9 mode. That way I can put the shots on the same timeline. In bright light the A1 blows the VX2000 away, but in low light, the VX2000 is better, interpolated lines and all.

My personal preference would be to make a mask of transparent coloured lighting gel material with a 16:9 frame cut in it, attach this over the LCD screen and use this to shoot for 16:9 safe image area in 4:3 mode. I assume you are able to use the cam in its underwater housing with the screen opened. If you are using a separate viewfinding device, forget anything I have said.

Which coloured lighting gel works best for underwater light, I cannot tell you, only an experiment can.

An underwater camera is a difficult enough beast to control, so having that little bit of vertical leeway by shooting in 4:3 to recover correct framing in post is worth keeping.

This post is 100% correct. There is such a loss of Vertical resolution that the picture is about VHS quality. Now, put that on a large widescreen!


Robert:

I don't think anyone has a problem with the 2 cents everyone is putting in. My problem with this whole thing is I don't get the technical side of it.

From what I can make out, DV 16:9 in the Sony still comes packaged inside a 720 wide frame. And so does 4:3. So it seems to me you should avoid the 16:9 hocus pocus in the camera, and stretch into your 16:9 frame in post where you have more control over the output. Thats why if I know I am going out to 16:9 I would rather choose a matte in camera, over the 16:9 selection. Others just put a tape or guide over LCD to approximate letter box and do it on time line in post. But no matter what you choose, if you go to 16:9 you loose use of some of the pixels, and that is an effective loss of resolution.

You're probaly speaking tongue-in-cheek, Lou, but the VX2k in its 16:9 mode is simply miles better than anything I've seen off S-VHS, let alone VHS.

tom.

Thanks for the useful discussion everyone.

I'm set up for the memory mix method now but I'm still recommending to the customer that I shoot 4:3 with the external monitor masked top and bottom with black insulating tape (in lieu of suitable gel).

For film transfer would you shoot interlaced or progressive? Bear in mind my camera is PAL.

Nick

Don't shoot progressive on the Sony. It defaults to 12.5 full resolution fps. Fine if you want to use the camera as a motor-drive still camera, but far too jerky motion for movies.

In general, is the widescreen mode of the VX2100 unusable for anything professional, or can it still be passed off as something good to people that don't really know the difference between it and a camera with native 16:9?

How does it compare to the Canon XL1 and other cameras in its class in terms of widescreen?

The VX2100 does what they term an 'anamorphic' widescreen, although the viewfinders are shown letterbox so there's no horizontal compression distortions. Much nicer than the XM2, say.

I shoot with my VX2000 in the 16:9 mode professionally when the demand is there. Last week for instance I shot a stage show and the 16:9 is a perfect aspect ratio to use. If I'd have shot in 4:3 the bottom of the screen would have been heads of audience and the top of the screen would've been curtains, so effectively my resolution of the actors was unchanged.

tom.

What about going in reverse? Shooting with the in-camera 16:9 and later shrinking it down for 4:3....Anyone?

In general, is the widescreen mode of the VX2100 unusable for anything professional, or can it still be passed off as something good to people that don't really know the difference between it and a camera with native 16:9?

How does it compare to the Canon XL1 and other cameras in its class in terms of widescreen?

Just my opinion, but I think the 16:9 digital sampling on the VX/PD series is terrible. My old Canon Elura had a FAR higher resolution 16:9 image - and it used the same basic crop and scale technique. If I were shooting 16:9 on a VX/PD I'd go 4:3 and crop in post. I've got some screenshots of rez charts from my Elura buried on my web site, and its 16:9 was actually pretty decent.

www.philipwilliams.com

I agree Philip, and if you're talking NTSC I'd agree even more with your thought that the VX/PD is not for 16:9.

My PAL 576 lines are reduced to 432 in 16:9 which is just about accep[table on a decent 16:9 TV, but NTSC's 360 lines in the same mode just isn't good enough.

When I replay my stage show footage on a conventional; 4:3 TV it appears masked, but the resolution of the performers is the same as if I'd filled the screen with audience heads and curtains.

Marco - What are you thinking? Go stand in the corner.

tom.

I agree Philip, and if you're talking NTSC I'd agree even more with your thought that the VX/PD is not for 16:9.

My PAL 576 lines are reduced to 432 in 16:9 which is just about accep[table on a decent 16:9 TV, but NTSC's 360 lines in the same mode just isn't good enough.

When I replay my stage show footage on a conventional; 4:3 TV it appears masked, but the resolution of the performers is the same as if I'd filled the screen with audience heads and curtains.

Marco - What are you thinking? Go stand in the corner.

tom.


I've been trying to "get" this for a long time. Why is there a need for digital resampling in the VX/PD in the first place. If the DV wide screen and DV Standard are both 720 wide, why is resampling need to turn it to 16:9. It would seem that in wide you just cut the top and bottom off and have less lines, that the picture showing would have the same resolution as a comparable area of 4:3. I am sure I've missed something obvious in my self taught DV 101 class, but its not making sense to me. Anyone ?

It would seem that in wide you just cut the top and bottom off and have less lines, that the picture showing would have the same resolution as a comparable area of 4:3.

It would seem that way based on what one sees in this camera's LCD and viewfinder, and indeed many cameras DO achieve a widescreen image this way. This is also what you are doing when using the Memory Mix function; the image area remaining inside the letterbox has the same detail level as it would in a 4:3 image. But that's NOT how the built-in widescreen function works on the VX2000.

This camera DOES crop the image to make it 16:9, but something else happens before anything is written to tape. The "stretch" I was talking about earlier is that something. The image is cropped, but then digitally resampled vertically to make it a 4:3 image. Due to the vertical resizing, the picture is naturally distorted, but your editing software corrects for that distortion when you import the footage.

Is it strictly necessary? Well, no, I suppose not, which is why so many recommend either the Memory Mix trick you use, or simply shooting a full 4:3 that is framed for 16:9 and cropping after the fact. The aforementioned digital resampling would be bad enough on a progressive image (I think), but performing the same scaling on interlaced footage is even worse. A few posts ago I was saying that it wasn't so bad, apparently I'd forgotten the truth; I went back and looked at some test footage I'd shot using the in camera widescreen mode, and while the nearly-horizontal lines I recorded aren't too offensive, nor is the overall level of detail (only 360 NTSC lines, but it's not too muddy to me), but the ugly, thick black ring around some moving objects is.

I'm not trying to "dis" anybody in this theoretical discussion, because each of us uses practical solutions for our needs. I'm just trying to get the theory through my thick head. This is DV for dummies. So the way I see the 16:9 this is as follows:

1. DV was originally developed as 4:3 medium. 720 x 480

2. As it became popular, someone decided 16:9 should be available in the format, so a something was devised to work that into the same envelope. What that was, I don't know. Because we still have the same number of pixels wide, right?

3. So Sony doesn't want to change its chip, but wants to give its VX2K and later users 16:9 wide screen selection, so it does some kind of electronic magic to widen the existing pixels so it will cover a wide screen if selected. That produces a resolution issue, with some of us.

4. Other cameras, including some Sony models also have a native 16:9 chip. So what actually happens there ? Are the native "pixels" wider, or are there just more of the same size pixels anyway? If the latter were the case, then you would have more electronic interpolation to bring it back to 720 wide.

5. So now, you have this 720 wide file still, that you need to show on a 16:9 monitor. So from what I understand, there is a "flag" in the file that says: "Mr. Signal reader, you need to send me out as 16:9 so the 16:9 TV can get see the video in proper aspect"- and that also tells the modern 4:3 TV to add letterbox stripe top and bottom. Older TVs don't have that capability, so you end up with a "tall effect" in the video output. So what I gather happens there is that 720 field is stretched wider. So that means the signal that was originally recorded was actually squeezed into the narrower 720 width, with some kind of magic that saves the quality we associated with the native 16:9 capture.

Can anybody comment or dispell any of the presumptions in my 16:9 For Dummies process or add to the pixel width question ?

I think that's mostly correct, but I'm no engineer, so I fail to grasp the really intricate details of how these procedures are performed.

NTSC DV is, in my understanding, always 720x480. What makes it 4:3 or 16:9 is the pixel aspect ratio. With 4:3 NTSC, it's .9:1, or thereabouts (it goes to several decimal places, I don't know the exact value) meaning that the pixels are .9 units wide for every one unit they are tall. When you use 16:9, however, the same number of pixels is recorded, but the pixel aspect is set to 1.2 (or something similar, don't quote me on that number), meaning they're wider than they are tall. A device capable of receiving this information and correcting for it will do so, but a 4:3 TV that cannot distinguish between pixel ratios will show a 4:3 picture at all times, regardless of how the footage was recorded.

As for native 16:9 cameras, I think the sensors simply have more of the same shaped pixels. The footage still gets recorded at 720x480, but the finer resolution of the chips provides for a better image (I think downsampling is easier and better looking than upsampling, in most situations).

And yet other cameras, like the PDX10, have 4:3 chips that have more pixels than most; I think that model boasts a one megapixel still photo capability. When taking photos, the PDX10 (and TRV900, by extension) uses the entire chip, and the entire megapixel's worth of resolution. When recording 16:9 DV, it can simply capture data from a wide area and record that. In other words, the chip may be 4:3, but it has more than 720 pixels across its width, and those can be used to generate better looking widescreen footage than this camera can. The details of which and how many pixels are used on the PDX10 for this, however, are a mystery to me, I have no first hand experience with the camera.

Thanks, Robert. The .9 Pixel reference I see in some editing and rendering situations now makes sense.

Hello,

I mistakenly (don't ask me how:)) shot a video shoot this past weekend with one cam (vx2000) in 4:3 mode and the other (vx2100) in 16:9 mode. Are there any suggestions on how to match this in post using a Sony Vegas? I've tried adding running a script that places the black bars at the top and bottom, but of course since I didn't shoot in 16:9 it cuts off the top of some of the video. Is there anything that can be done?

Thanks,
Troy

If you want all in same aspect, you are going to have to open a project (at least in PPro) in the aspect you want, and then trim the non conforming footage. To try to squeeze the footage one way or the other will result in distortion of the non-conforming footage.

I'm going to shoot in Nepal and would like to take advantage of the panaramas shooting with a PD150. Is the quality diminished by switching to 16:9 or is it just a "cut off" picture? Should I consider shooting Progressive?
There is no electricity to charge batteries and although I plan to shoot sparingly I won't be able to charge for 20 days- I'm going to try a Brunton Solarport 4.4 - has anyone tried charging with one?
Any ideas (short of a different camera) for shooting in a remote, cold area?
Thanks
Jay

can't help on the battery situation but the 150's 16:9 isn't a real 16:9-it simply crops off the image and frankly I don't like the way it looks - seems like it's not a sharp as the 4:3
As for PROGRESSIVE the 150 doesn't shoot REAL progressive except at 15FPS (NTSC) so as long as no one is moving I guess you could use it.

Why not mark the LCD with the 16:9 crop lines (top and bottom) shoot 4:3 and crop it out in post-as for progressive perhaps do that in post as well.

I love my 150 (had 2 at one time) BUT for the way you want to shoot probably not he best choice.

Don

You can also use an 16:9 mask in camera to create the 16:9 letterbox in the 4:3 mode.

thanks - jay

Forget the progressive scan as it simply turns the PD into a motor-drive still camera. At 12.5 fps (PAL) it's not much use for anything else.

The 16:9 mode is surprisingly good, as it's using an electronic anamorphic compression and not simply cutting off the top and bottom of the picture. If you view the results on a 4:3 TV you see it letterboxed with no loss of resolution at all - but if you expand that to fill the screen of a true 16:9 set, then yes, the picture does get a bit softer.

You talk about 'panoramas', but don't forget that in the switch to 16:9 you lose wide-angle coverage (diagonally) so you'll need a wide-angle converter.

I'd say that the PD150 is a fine camera to take into difficult climates and conditions. It was taken into every war zone going and came out triumphant. I'd take lots of NPF-970 batteries, though.

tom.

Progressive Tip:

You should experiment with it before you depend on it, but there is a way to the Digital Effect Flash mode to get a pseudo Progressive with the VX and PD cameras. See this thread for full explanation. It is pretty interesting. See posts 5- 15 for discussion and use.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=84045

My personal preference would be to put a safe area mask on the LCD screen to keep your framing within the preferred area and shoot 4:3. This gives you a little forgiveness for re-framing in post.

Don't use sticky on the LCD screen itself. Shoot everything as pure and unaltered as you can. Don't mess with any effects at all. This is a rare and costly event you are doing. You can put salt in the stew but you can't take it out.

Electronic widescreen works okay. The Century Optics 16:9 anamorphic lens works better but it is an added weight, can become skewed and I would also have some anxieties about CA when shooting with bright snow, dark rocks and sharp edges in background.

You also have to be vigilent about corner cropping on the widest end of the lens so in your situation where simple is best, I would leave the 16:9 anamorphic at home and take the resolution hit.

For the wide panoramic views I would be inclined to cover the identical shot twice, one with a human in it to establish scale and one without. A human in the shot will also tend to distract the viewer from inferior resolution which is most observable in the highly textured and contrasted wides.

There is the "Over Land and Under Water" thread furthur down in "Special Interest Areas". Ask for some advice there. Those people really know what they are doing in wilderness imaging and will surely give you some good advice.

The principle questions I would ask are how to deal with the snowcaps and high contrasts (UV and polariser filters?), white balance, ultra-violet light, batteries in cold evironments, camera acclimatisation methods, lens care.

If I was going to take an accessory lens, it would be the wide-angle adaptor for the Sony or maybe even a fisheye.

On 12.5 fps progressive. If you do not have movements happening close to the camera in the frame and the camera is locked off on a tripod, I would say "why not?" in selected situations but get normal interlace coverage as well for the same shots.

cropping also compromises resolution

I've had decent experiences using the electronic 16/9 -- it doesn't from my eyes appear to apreciably harm the sharpness --

If you are certain to end up with 16/9, I'd shoot that way using the electronic mode (but test yourself to see if you agree.)

NP970s are fairly light and cheap -- pack as many as you think you'll need. Does that solar charger weigh much ?? (BTW -- I've bought an NP970 cheap at a street camera shop in Saigon a year ago).

BTW -- Sony made a little known accessory light that worked on the VX2000 -- (never tried it on the PD150, though I bet it does) Incredibbly tiny, it gets powers off the main battery through the powered hot shoe. Diffused with tough spun, it makes an incredibly useful light for situations such as you'll be in.

good luck...

I am not advocating against using electronic 16:9 for resolution reasons alone. It is true cropping in post also introduces a resolution hit.

My recommendation for using 4:3 with a safe area mask for 16:9, is to enable vertical re-framing options in post where for whatever reason, the vertical framing of the shot might be off.

After scuttling up and down mountain trails or riding hot crowded buses, there will be a fatigue factor in play which can diminish the skill set.

If there is some extra image area to use for later enhancements like re-framing a poorly composed shot or stabilising an image which is all shook up due to muscle tiredness, then that is the option I would prefer to keep.

Most times, I use the electronic 16:9 option.

Okay. I've been hammered a few times for indicating that I have gotten decent results shooting with my VX 2000 in 16:9 mode and combining with FX1 footage in 16:9, in an SD format. I'm trying to rectify those comments with my experience.

Of course, the first thought is my standards are not high enough, and that may be the case, I tend to shoot for family, friends and school functions, etc.

But I still think there is more to it than that, and I am postulating my perception is the result of the following. I am wondering if Boyd Ostroff and others with more experience would tell me where I am wrong:

1. I have been told that the 16:9 coming from the Sony VX and PD only has a resolution of 380 vertical lines. I understand and believe that. It is painfully obvious on the computer in editing programs, and when played from .avi of direct capture on my computer monitors.

2. What I have experienced though, is that when I output this material after editing to DVD, and play it on a standard definition television, the difference between a dedicated 16:9 chip camera and the PD is much less obvious. It may even be negligible.

3. I postulate that this is due to the fact that (unless my understanding is wrong) the actual vertical resolution of letter boxed material on an 4:3 standard definition television would be around 360 lines.

So is the reason that I do not notice much difference in my finished DVD material due the fact that the 480 lines from the dedicated 16:9 chip have to be downrezed for display on my standard definition TV.
Or what.

That's exactly it. An SD television dispays 480 lines (essentially that's part of the specs of an NTSC SD television), and a letterboxed 16:9 image uses only 360 of those lines.

Wow, I never thought of that. Thanks for making this topic.

So I did a little test to try out this hypothesis.

I took video of a fan in my room with the FX1 and VX2000, in 16:9 SD on both.

Then I captured both into Pinnacle 10 Plus. From there, I captured a 1 bit map from each clip. They are shown below as FX1.bmp and VX2k.bmp. The bit map image turned out to be 853 by 480.

Then I took those images into Photoshop, created two new blank images at 640 by 480 to simulate SD TV resolution. I then copied the original photos and reduced them to fit into the 640x480, leaving bars at the top.

I will let you be the judge of the images. My impression is that the reduction in resolution actually brings the VX2k image closer to the FX1 image. (I was hand holding each camera, and shot in auto, so there may be some shake issues there.) Check it out.

sorry but the difference stay the same for me, at original size or reduced.
...and VX looks much better.
but the important thing is what YOU see, and if you are happy with the VX2000 picture, nobody should complain.
From my point of view, SD can be as good as HD. I run everyday good DVD on my 1344x768 42" LCD TV (HDMI comnnection to player) and they look much better than everything i can get from my VX2000, or even the same as my FX1, but these are SD DVD.
it is especially amazing on cartoon like "over the Hedge" or "Happy Feet" or "Shreck" were you can see every details of animals furs or every dot of skin texture.
The only difference is that the original material is very high resolution.

It looks like the FX1 image was sharpened more in-camera. Actual resolution isn't as different as the difference in sharpening can make it appear. Try sharpening the image from the VX (in photoshop) and I think you'll find they look a bit more similar.

There are other differences though. The color balance of the FX1 image looks cooler. There appears to be more noise in the VX image.

Just my impressions, at a glance.

Sorry for "hammering" you Chris :-) Handholding is probably not the best way to show what the FX1 can do. I have done tests myself, and had them online for a long time but finally dumped it all to make room on my website. But they convinced me that 16:9 on the VX doesn't give the quality I need.

Comparing them on a regular TV probably isn't a good way to judge the difference, but I think Giroud makes a good point. If they work well in your application then who cares what all of us think? ;-) I think it's great that you took the time to do this and draw your own conclusions actually. Much too often people ask questions of strangers and base decisions on the response because they're just too lazy to do a little research on their own.

But it you want to do another test, go outside and shoot some kind of landscape on a tripod with a lot of small objects, like distant trees or buildings. I think you will see a more pronounced difference between the VX and FX in this situation.

Also, I'm not all that impressed with shooting in SD mode on my Z1. Pretty sure the difference would be more pronounced if you shot in HDV and downconverted either in-camera or with software.

Couple things though:

1. It's 360 lines and not 380.

2. The VX and just about all SD cameras without true progressive mode do some form of field blending. This is necessary to prevent flickering edges on nearly horizontal surfaces and lines. Imagine a horizontal line which is only one pixel wide. It would be captured in the odd field but not the even field, and would therefore flash on and off with interlaced video. So even though 360/480 would appear to be a 25% loss of resolution, in reality it's probably not that severe since the VX doesn't really output 480 discreet lines in the first place.

hey chris, want to try something else while you're at it? do another screen cap with that "flash setting" on. i personally don't see a visible quality difference and that mode kinda replicates progressive(kinda) so why not give it a shot!

also, you already turned your sharpness down in the cams, right?

Also, I'm not all that impressed with shooting in SD mode on my Z1. Pretty sure the difference would be more pronounced if you shot in HDV and downconverted either in-camera or with software.


The downsampled Z1 HDV image should be a bit sharper than the VX, but if the downsampling is done in photoshop, the difference will appear to be greater, because the downsampled chroma resolution will be higher than with the 4:1:1 coming from the VX.

Everything was on auto on the cameras, including focus. FX1 was actually set to the PP1, which I have not modified from factory settings, I realized afterward, I used the fan housing because it had straight lines and curves. Should have mounted on tripod, but I did this on spur of moment more than anything just to see results, deciding to post them afterwards. I could have definitely been more scientific about it.

I do see a clear difference, in the full resolution video, comparing the two, and that is clear. My only point is that in the process of encoding to DVD mpeg, then having the DVD player scale to a standard 4:3 screen, the greater portion of that difference can disappear pretty quickly, and assuming that is your target, use of the 16:9 feature on the VX's and PD's may not be as detrimental as I was originally thinking.

Boyd, I agree with your thoughts on the actually editing FX1 footage in HDV or Cineform intermediate, then down converting. I do that regularly. And I I'm experimenting with a self built 35mm adapter using that process too.

I will try to do the landscape "test" in a day or too, also, because my curiosity is up on that one too.

In the past with the VX2000, if I had wanted a leterbox 16:9 effect, I would use an in camera mask. So I will add that to the test too, just to see where that goes.

hey chris, want to try something else while you're at it? do another screen cap with that "flash setting" on. i personally don't see a visible quality difference and that mode kinda replicates progressive(kinda) so why not give it a shot!

also, you already turned your sharpness down in the cams, right?

I have messed a bit with the Flash utility to create the fake "24P" effect on my VX2000. It is interesting. My first impression, though, was that resolution did drop a bit in that process... but that is another good experiement.

Lets see, a wedding this weekend, finish UWOL challenge, then fun experiments...

My only point is that in the process of encoding to DVD mpeg, then having the DVD player scale to a standard 4:3 screen, the greater portion of that difference can disappear pretty quickly

Well no argument there. When you letterbox 16:9 in 4:3 you only have 360 lines in the image area, so there isn't gonna be much if any difference. The expression "pearls before swine" comes to mind if you're using an FX1 for that application ;-)

Boyd:

While we are on the subject of FX1 and VX, lets say for some reason I want to shoot the two cameras in 4:3 for an SD gig. From what I can tell, the FX1 and z1 lops off the sides, relying on the pixel aspect ratio to give the full picture 4:3. But doesn't that actually reduce the actually pixels, and since it does, how does that effect resolution ?

IIRC, the sensor has 960 pixels but interpolates this to 1440 using pixel shifting. So I think there are enough pixels to get full resolution (especially as you say your target is 4:3 on consumer TV's) but it's more like shooting with a 1/4" chip camera since the sides of the 16:9 native CCD's aren't being used in 4:3 mode.

My totally unscientific gut reaction is that 4:3 video from my VX-2000 looks better than 4:3 from my Z1. Recently I looked at some 4:3 material I shot 5 years ago with the VX, and I was reminded just how nice an image that camera can create.

Okay, as Boyd suggested, I did the landscape test on the FX1 and VX 2K, both in SD, obviously. On the VX2k I also shot one in 4:3, using a mask I applied in memory mix mode.

The shots below are labeled and self explanatory. It looks like again, at better performance as Boyd indicated in FX1 16x9, especially at full DV resolution, with what I think is a decreasing the edge in the 640 by 480 resolution reduction. The shot with the matte applied gives pause, at it appears at least as good as the 16 by 9 VX2k mode shot. That confirms what I've seen earlier user indicate. Problem with it is if you mix that on a 16:9 time line, you have to stretch it to fill the frame, and I think you lose there. .....

I recently did a year-end wrap up reel mixing footage from VX2100, Canon XL1s, and a Sony A1U. The final project was 16X9, done in post. I have to say that shooting with the VX in 4:3 and then stretching it in post yields some NICE results. I was pretty surprised at how well the VX stacked up against in the other two cams.

my $.02

Just to confuse an otherwise straightforward thread: There is no particular reason why you would be obliged to letterbox 16:9 material, even SD material, unless forced to view it on an SD set and if that set doesn't offer 16:9 scan. My HD delivers a rather spectacular 16:9 SD display of DV material, using the full 480 lines (actually it upconverts to 1080i, so it 'line doubles') ...

The 16:9 recording of DV uses the full 720x480 frame area without wasting any space on black bars -- so although the imaging chips are not fully utilized during shooting in 16:9, there is a real gain in the recording that is then preserved in post ... as long as you can present on a 'proper' 16:9 capable set.

GB

Ok, I'll bite. What brand hd set do you have that renders these wonderful results? I'd like to know, as I'm considering a purchase in the near future.Thanks.

Mine's a Sony 53" HiScan CRT -- but I don't think that's the key factor, the issue is a set which can display 16:9 without adding letterbox, which I'd think was a function of any HD set that can display widescreen SD material. My DVD player, for example, will output 480p on the component outputs and display as a 16:9 image.

HTH

GB

Yes,thank you.

I'm shooting with a Sony PDX10P that can do true widescreen but I have a question:

If widescreen is the same resolution as 4:3, doesn't the image quality suffer slightly from the 'stretching'?

The thing is, we work with a lens adapter and we're cutting the frame to anamorphic anyway. So if we just zoom in on our wide focussing screen until it fits into frame left and right, we won't even have to mind that you still see some black up and above because it'll be cut off and you'll see the whole focussing screen so putting the camera in wide mode won't really make the angle wider. So it seems to me that 4:3 is better because it should be sharper, right?

Because if you shoot widescreen, for as far as I understand, a wider image is squeezed into the normal DV resolution and the image is stretched again afterwards. If you shoot 4:3, none or very little of this occurs.