16:9 vs. 4:3 opinion

[Rob Lohman]

Okay, but that is different from the effect you described. Because
in this way NOTHING gets chopped off from the sides. The full
image is retained in the horizontal. Only the vertical is un-scaled
and then black bars added.

[Kevin Maistros]

Right, as in to keep the 16:9 but if fullscreen is desired I would have just cut out the sides and left it rest at 100% vertical.

[Rob Lohman]

Kevin, you cannot leave the vertical resolution because it is
scaled. If you do NOT scale this back for a 4:3 TV all people will
look very tall etc. (long faces). You cannot crop the sides to
get a full 4:3 image (technically you can, but the aspect ratio
is incorrect).

A 16:9 image has much higher pixels than they are wide (before
it is unsquashed/scaled) instead of 4:3. Therefor you do either
the followin:

1. output to 16:9 TV -> leave the signal as is

2. output to 4:3 TV -> scale the vertical back and add black bars

3. unknown TV -> do the same as 2

The only exception is when you are going to DVD. Make sure
you author the DVD correctly so that it knows your footage is
16:9 anamorphic. Then the DVD player will either do step 1
or step 2 (in realtime) when the user has indicated it doesn't
have a widescreen TV

[Kevin Maistros]

Thanks, Rob :)

[Rob Lohman]

No problem!

[Kevin Burnfield]

You know I've been planning and shooting in 4:3 for a while now and framing and matting for widescreen but we got hired to shoot part of a BBC documentary and the producer wanted it shot 16:9, so we did.

I have to say I was impressed with the footage and how "filmish" it looked with little effort on our part and with lighting that was beyond our control. (I love the XL1S more all the time!)

The nice thing about Final Cut Pro and the XL1S is that it can communicate with the camera and knows when it's capturing 16:9 and you don't have to reset anything.

I was reading a few things here about no loss of quality shooting either way and honestly if I have a situation where someone or some market wants full screen we'd alter the 16:9- - I"m getting ready to shoot a film and have been going back and forth on a daily basis (my DP has given up on me and says that as long as I tell him that day what we are shooting it that's soon enough for him) but I'm pretty sure we'll shoot 16:9.

LOL! But I might change my mind....

[Chris Wright]

I'm trying to find the best way to shoot 16:9 video with my GL2. From what I have read so far, it seems you get slightly better resolution using the electronic 16:9 mode instead of cropping and scaling 4:3 footage, correct?

When I capture 16:9 footage into Final Cut Pro (version 4.5 HD), will it automatically convert the stretched 4:3 image back into the native 16:9 image that I want to edit with? If not, how do I change the Final Cut canvas to a 16:9 format?

One last thing...
I will be outputting the video to DVD using DVD Studio Pro 3. How can I encode/process the video so that it will automatically play correctly on any TV without making seperate 4:3 and 16:9 versions of the movie? For example, can I have one version of the 16:9 video on a DVD that plays with black bars (letterboxed) on a 4:3 TV, but automatically stretches to fill the entire image of a 16:9 TV?

Rob Lohman mentioned something about authoring your DVD correctly so that the DVD player knows your footage is 16:9 anamorphic. How do I do this in DVDSP3?

Thanks,
Chris

[Rob Lohman]

Chris: I cannot help you with your Mac specific questions and
software for that platform since I do not have a Mac. Perhaps it
would best to repost the DVD anamorphic authoring question
as a new thread, I'll try to walk by your other questions as good
as I can.

You will not get better resolution but less compression since
all the pixels being compressed are the ones being used. If
you shoot 4:3 and then crop you will throw away compression
bandwidth you could've used for details in other places. What
you gain with 4:3 and cropping is choice to re-frame your footage
as you see fit.

Usually in your NLE (Final Cut Pro in this case) you select a 16:9
project and the NLE will show you the widescreen image instead
of a distorted picture.

Yes, you can do this with DVD. The DVD system has been setup
to postpone the 16:9 vs. 4:3 option till later in the process,
namely the DVD player.

With VHS recordings for example the decision is made at recording
time. It is stored in 4:3 or letterboxed 4:3. In theory you could
also put 16:9 on a VHS tape, but I've never seen any.

With DVD you store the 16:9 file and indicate that it is 16:9 and
not 4:3. A DVD player checks this on playback and either does
two things. Nothing or scales it back to 4:3 and adds letterboxing.

How does it know how to do this? Through the setup screen
each DVD player has. Here you can indicate whether you have
a widescreen anamorphic 16:9 capable TV/projector etc. attached
or not.

However to get this all to work you must author your DVD's
correctly. I'm 100% sure DVDSP can do this. I don't know what
program does the MPEG2 encoding on the Mac platform but when
this is done a special 16:9 flag must be turned ON. Also when
authoring the DVD this flag must be turned ON so the DVD player
knows what kind of content is on the disc.

This is the best explenation I can give you with my limited
knowledge of the Mac platform. I hope it is of some use to you.

[Michael J Perry]

I alwayas use the crop guides

[Tyler Grace]

Hello, one quick question since i can't find it anywhere else.

When using the canon 3x wide angle lens, do you shoot in 16:9 or 4:3 on the camera?

[Dylan Couper]

I always shoot in 4:3 regardless of the lens, then if I want 16:9, I crop it in post.

[Andrew Petrie]

<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper : I always shoot in 4:3 regardless of the lens, then if I want 16:9, I crop it in post. -->>>

I do too, but I've never experimented much on how to actually crop it in Vegas, where there's the correct aspect ratio, but no black bars. I'm doing a video this weekend, about 400+ import tuner cars on a cruise with a Fall theme, I'd like to do a widescreen piece.

[Rob Lohman]

If you open the crop screen for a video piece you can choose a
16:9 widescreen mask to crop it. I usually add a 16:9 mask as
a top track in Vegas so I don't need to set it for every video
piece. You can find some masks etc. on my calculator page

[Andrew Petrie]

Great page you have there Rob, though I've been trying to completely crop a piece, not just mask it (which I have been doing, but I've never been happy with it). I'm sure it's something simple I'm missing.