Vegas and DVX100 Letterbox CORRECTION!!

[Neil Slade]

John, you need to stop toking up so much hahah!!

Anyway, I am concerned primarily with what appears on the viewer's TV set. No loss of resolution is detectable on a TV-

You can't directly compare the sharpness of the two on a TV anyway- because since the square pixel image is slightly smaller, you will of course see a microscopic bit more detail in the .9091 image, since its zoomed in bigger. But from the viewer's point of view sitting a few feet away from the TV set, no difference in sharpness-- the biggest change will be in the shape of the letterbox image, and restoration of the lost image outside in the safe zone, a more significant perceptual improvement in my opinion.

As for distortion on a TV set or LCD set- none. Proportions remain perfect to the naked eye, both for 4:3 or letterboxed video set to square pixels.

I didn't need to magnify anything, I could see with my own eyes, this is so obvious. Its REALLY obvious on a TV set-- nothing's distorted. You can measure it with a ruler-- I have.


******
Sorry, not interested in shooting 4;3 INSTEAD of widescreen.

You should know, however, that 30 % of my DVD film IS in fact 4:3.

I've got nothing against it-- but I also don't like using a square format still camera and prefer 35mm format- which is kind of close to what people see from DVX/Vegas letterbox-- unfixed. :-)

I've been an artist my entire life, a photographer since Jr High, and I'm 51 now-- I really love shooting widescreen in camera, and I see no benefits to going backwards-- besides, it would solve nothing I am complaining about, like losing picture off the sides, and not seeing the correct image in the external monitor.

Later-- I've got about 50 DVDs to send out tomorrow...

[Jesse Rosten]

"You do get a NARROWING, and lengthening of the image-- pillar box--when you apply the 1.0 aspect to regular 4:3 footage."

I disagree. Try this Neil. Put some full-screen 4:3 footage in your Vegas timeline. Turn on "simulate device aspect ratio." This simulates how your footage will appear on your TV. Now switch the project settings to square pixels. The only thing that changes is you get black bars on the edges of your screen. The picture aspect stays the same.

One thing to remember Neil when you export these frame grabs to photoshop. Computer monitors have sqaure pixels. DV footage does not. You need to make sure that you are compensating for this. Under "image" in photoshop there is an option to select different pixel aspect ratios. This helps to ensure that your .909 image is displaying correctly on your square pixeled computer monitor.

"I want to see EVERYTHING I SHOT. TVs and .9091 were cutting off my shots! It does not show what you see in the DVX LCD and viewfinder."

FYI even the DVX viewfinder does not show you the full picture. There's just a little bit of overscan in there.

"I found it, and everybody else IGNORES IT and accepts the fact that the technology is going to remove 15% off the sides of their work when"

Who is everybody? The two people that are replying to you on this thread actually think it's an "intriguing" idea. I can see how this might work for broadcast material. But I'd never do this on a DVD...

The problem I have is that when I watch your DVD on my widescreen LCD monitor not only have I lost the top and bottom 30% (approx) of the picture to letterbox, I have also lost 15% to pillar box. That's 45% less resolution.
Neil, what you really REALLY need is to buy a 16x9 Xl2. :)
take 'er easy brain man.


peace
jesse

[Neil Slade]

Hey, you're right about the non-distortion to 4:3 when using square pixels-- yes, it does the same thing on the TV that the square pixels applied to letterbox image does, it merely shrinks it, and more of the edge shows-

However, selecting/deselecting "simulate device pixel aspect ratio" has absolutely no effect whatsoever in the preview window for the 4:3 image when square pixels are selected. It only affects the preview window appearance when .9091 is selected, AND you have the safe area grid shown. It changes nothing on the monitor of course.
I'm doing it now, and looking at it now as I type.

Again- I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH HOW MY FOOTAGE LOOKS ON MY MONITOR.

I am concerned with the FINAL OUTPUT PRODUCT- i.e. how my DVD looks on my audiences' customerss TV set.

I've actually looked at my letterboxed squared footage on EVERYTHING at this point including LCD TVs-- I prefer to see the whole picture, and it looks fine, and perfectly proportioned on portable DVD players, LCD TVs, widescreen TVS,etc.

Of course when you say you have lost 30% of the picture when you look at my letterboxed movie-- you haven't lost anything, because I never filmed that portion.

Are you saying that MORE is better? Is this why people buy SUVs, because they can cram more junk in it when they drive to the corner 7-11? Does this mean that a Mahler symphony is better because its twice as long as a Beethoven symphony? In this way, 4:3 footage is better because the picture is bigger up and down, right?

This is only true if you are looking at a 4:3 screen. If you are in a theater, or have a widescreen screen, you lose what is available to you.

Hahaha! Cheers.

[John Hudson]

Speechless.

[Jesse Rosten]

Neil is there room in your convertable for John and I? I've got lots of Dapper Dan hair gel. :)


"However, selecting/deselecting "simulate device pixel aspect ratio" has absolutely no effect whatsoever in the preview window for the 4:3 image when square pixels are selected. It only affects the preview window appearance when .9091 is selected, AND"

That's because Vegas is already correcting for the pixel difference. Of course there is no difference when you select and deselect "simulate aspect". You're switching between sqaure pixels and square pixels. No difference.

"Of course when you say you have lost 30% of the picture when you look at my letterboxed movie-- you haven't lost anything, because I never filmed that portion."

No, not losing picture. Losing RESOLUTION.

peace
jesse

[John Hudson]

It's like being 7 years old and finding Fools Gold for the first time but not realizing it's fake and then your dad says 'Son...'

[Neil Slade]

Losing 30% resolution????

Okay, now I know you have eaten way too many mushrooms.


Yes, there were WMD in Iraq too.


You lose ZERO, NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NADA resolution in the DVX100 letterbox mode.

Do your homework before spreading such rumours, pretty please- no offense taken however, I know how these things start.

As for the "rumour" that electronic anamorphic, as found in the GL2, reduced resolution, this was disproved long ago, and in fact vertical resolution IMPROVED after measuring, much to the delight of Canon and GL2 users.

You do, in fact, however, lose 30% of the viewable picture area switching to letterbox or widescreen when viewed on a 4:3 screen. This hasn't convinced EVERY major filmaker of the past 40 years to start shooting in 4:3 again. Oh wait, Coppola did One From The Heart in 4:3, and there's a few other exceptions.

[Chris Hurd]

Help me, Barry Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. pzzzt. Help me, Barry Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.

[Jesse Rosten]

"You lose ZERO, NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NADA resolution in the DVX100 letterbox mode....Do your homework before spreading such rumours"

I did my homework. See if you can wrap your Amygdalaes around this concept.

Start with DV resolution. 720x480. Crop the top and the bottom. Now you have 720x360. Neil, let me ask you....which is the higher number? 480 or 360? These... numbers (as they're called) correspond to resolution. So the higher the number the more resolution. Yes, I know I'm being sardonic. Forgive me.

I think that maybe you are confusing the actual image area with resolution. When you resize your footage using your method you don't lose any of the original PICTURE/image. But that picture now occupies fewer pixels on the screen. Instead of using 720X360 pixels to store your image, you are using somthing wack like 640X290.


peace
jesse

[David Jimerson]

You know, much to my own dismay I just read through this entire thread, and I've come away with four conclusions:

1) Neil just now discovered overscan, and is going to get a lot of questions like "why are there black bars on the sides of the picture" when someone watches one of his DVDs on a TV which has a less-intensive overscan than others, to say nothing of watching it on, say, a laptop.

2) Neil thinks that the "problem" is in Vegas alone, whereas in reality, all NLEs give you the same result. Why . . . ? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO.

3) Neil would rather insult people than pay attention to what they have to say, if they don't validate him.

Neil, "8 1/2" is not 16:9. It's wider, so the picture is not as tall. Period. It, too, is affected by overscan, and no, you're not seeing the entire picture when you watch that DVD. It's not a matter for debate. It's the way it is.

There's nothing wrong with Vegas.

[Chris Hurd]

Hi David,

I counted only three conclusions. ;-)

With regard to "Neil would rather insult people than pay attention to what they have to say," that's only because I haven't edited this thread yet. When I put the shears away, you won't see anybody insulting anyone, because that's one of our rules. We try to at least give the impression that everybody likes each other on this site, by force if necessary, heh.

Now I'm just trying to figure out if this thread belongs here or in the Vegas forum.

Thanks for posting; by the way I gave you a custom title which should look familiar. Much appreciated,

[David Jimerson]

Hi, Chris --

Touche'! Well, I *had* four, then combined two. :)

Your reputation as a class act precedes you, Chris. Glad to be aboard . . .

David

[Patrick King]

Chris,

I'd say you need to move this to Area 51 for two reasons:

1. I haven't read a thread more 'out there' on this forum.
2. The basic premise of the post is false and thus it must be rumor if it isn't true.
3. Any thread containing the word 'amygdala' needs to be safely tucked away.

Oh wait, that's three...ahhhh! Maybe if I crop one to 16:9...Barry Wan Kanobi...where are you?

[Barry Green]

I think David hit the nail on the head. Neil has heretofore been unaware of the concept of underscan, and is troubled by it. He's attempting to "fix" it. But in his attempt to "fix", he is unfairly slandering both the DVX and Vegas, when neither product is in any way "at fault". It's the nature of NTSC televisions. It's the way things have always been, it's the way things are.

So, here's the facts of the matter:

1) there is *nothing wrong* with Vegas. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

2) there is *nothing wrong* with the DVX. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Neil doesn't like what it's doing, and that's fine -- so he's changing it by scaling his image down. It is *not* "fixing" anything -- it is scaling the image down so that it sits within a smaller window. Which is decreasing resolution, and which will also add bigger black bars on televisions that don't overscan quite as much.

Neil, I have tested what you're suggesting. I've done it with letterbox footage and with 4:3 footage. The results are always the same: it shrinks the frame from 720x480 down to 720x436. If you prefer that look, for whatever reason, feel free to use it. But it's not a "fix", any more than applying color correction to a clip is a "fix" -- it's a stylistic choice, not a bug fix.

Regarding Vegas and the "safe area" -- if you're referring to the dashed-line overlay, there's nothing hard-and-fast about that. You can configure it to "protect" as much as you want. In the "preferences" dialog box you can configure different percentages for "action safe" and "title safe". No matter what you set them to, they do not affect your video in *any way* -- they're just guidelines to let you know where some TVs may start to cut off the image.

If you want to shrink your image down so that none of your image gets cut off by overscan, feel free to. Just recognize what you're doing: you're shrinking your footage, which means you are digitally resampling and scaling down your footage. That's something YOU'RE doing, not something the editing program is doing.

The editor deals with the pixels it's given. It uses .9091 because that *is* the aspect ratio of the video, and is the proper size. If you change that to 1.0, you are *forcing* the program to scale and mildly distort your video. "simulate device aspect ratio" has nothing to do with the video itself, and doesn't modify the actual video in any way (although it does make the preview window less accurate/fuzzier than it would otherwise be).

There are two concepts you don't seem to fully understand -- that of "square pixels" vs. "NTSC pixels", and that of "underscan". Read up on those two topics and you'll see that what everyone has been saying makes perfect sense, because it really, really is the way that it should be.

For DVX users or Vegas users who may have been alarmed by this thread, rest assured that there's nothing wrong. "Move along, nothing to see here..."

[Chris Hurd]

Ahhhhh. At last I can breathe a sigh of relief. Thanks to Barry's concise summation, I'm feeling a sense of closure finally. In fact now that Barry has straightened everything out, I think I'll extend that sense of closure to this thread, primarily to avoid going back around in circles again. Thanks to all for the brief but interesting drama. And now, back to our regular programming...

(Much appreciated as always, Barry -- for this, you have finally earned your custom title!)