Handling wide (aka 16x9) format in Vegas

[Alex Zabrovsky]

I'm willing to investigate the wide mode capabilities of my camera (Japanese Panasonic GS100). According to the spec foun on their site, once switched to Wide mode it should deliver 854x480 resolution (and that compliants to 16x9 ratio).
However downloading a test clips it is appearing in vegas preview window as a letterboxed with considerably lower vertical resolution. I'm somewhat confused how to consider the real wide resolution of the cam. Can it be Vegas display this way in Preview cutting the actual image to achieve the 16x9 on 4x3 frame size ?
Can I force vegas to display a real 16x9 in preview pan without letterboxing ?
(Simulate Device Aspect Ratio option doesn't help)

I can post a frame grabs for both 4x3 and 16x9 for evaluation.

Regards, Alex

[Bruce A. Christenson]

You should be able to show 16x9 in the preview pane without black bars. Are the project settings set to 16x9?

[Alex Zabrovsky]

Not sure, Bruce.
How to do that ?
Project properties were set to regular DV size (720x480) due to the fact of shooting in Wide format, tthe cam must store it in regular DV one which is defined as 720x480 for NTSC. As I understood there should a flag telling that th footage is Wide, so the 16x9 capable TV (or editor ?) should read this flag and uncompress the footage into proper 16x9 from within 720x480.

How should I tailor Vegas to treat this flag and uncompress the regular 720x480 into 16x9 (to be watchable in Preview pan) ?

[Bruce A. Christenson]

Two things to play with:

In the project settings menu (File -> settings) (?), there should be a properties field that allows you to set the project to 16x9 Widescreen NTSC rather than 4x3 NTSC. (or PAL if you use PAL).

When you put a clip on the timeline, there's an effects icon and a pan/crop icon. You can go into the pan/crop icon and set the pan/crop settings to match the output aspect ratio, not sure if you need to do this or not.

Worst case, can you put a second or two of your footage in AVI format on a site somewhere, so we can look at it ?

[Alex Zabrovsky]

Yeah, I fugured the DV NTSC Widescreen setting (720x480, 29.93 fps), that indeed changed the appearance in Preview, but, again, the image is looking like a regular 4x3 zoomed in in order to match 16x9 proportions - nothing about greater angles of view (i.e. added resolution) as expected from original wide format.

Just cut about a half second of Wide pattern AVI, now trying to figure how to save it as a separate AVI file. Can you please to guide me how to do that (perhaps from copying to Clipboard and then somehow Save from Clipboard to a file ? didn't find such option so far ...)

[Edward Troxel]

See if this helps any (copied):

I have been fighting with this for 2 days now. With some pointers from this board, and alot of experimenting, this is what I have come up with. This is a copy of my notes so I don't forget. Hope it helps. Just make the PAL changes.

NTSC 16:9 widescreen DVD production

Create Vegas 4 project
1. set project properties
template: NTSC DV Widescreen (720x480, 29.97 fps)
Pixel aspect ratio: 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen)

Video clips shot in 16:9 should have a properties setting of Pixel aspect ratio: 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen)

Stock clips such as Jump Backs should have a properties setting of Pixel aspect ratio: 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen)

Stills and masks made in Photoshop will vary. The "James Bond gun barel" mask made at 864x480
works well left at "1,000 square, Pixel aspect ratio.

The video in Vegas timeline when viewed on the 4:3 Sony 20" TV will look streched upward and will also fill the screen to all 4 sides. ALSO, when rendering the MPG file, the preview monitor in Vegas will show
a 4:3 view....don't panic.

To render for a DVD:
In V4, set in & out points on timeline.
Select; File-->Render as-->type=Mainconcept MPEG-2
Template: DVD Architect NTSC WIDESCREEN VIDEO STREAM
Click "CUSTOM"-->VIDEO tab
Set the constant or Variable bit rate. I-frames, B-frames. See bitrate calculator for numbers.
Video type: DVD
aspect ratio: 16:9 display
Click "Audio" tab. Be sure NO audio is selected. You will later render a seperate AC3 file.
Click OK,
at the main "render as" screen, be SURE the box labeled "Stretch video to fill output frame" IS NOT CHECKED.
Name your file & click Save.
When mpg file is done; render an AC3 audio file with the exact same name as the mpg file.

Set DVD-Architect new project properties to: NTSC Widescreen (720x480, 29.97 fps)
Drag the mpg file to the main window work space, and finish authoring, then burn.
Play final with DVD player output setting on 720P; Sony HDTV set on DVI input#7 for (DVD).
The picture will fill the entire screen at the proper acpect ratio, (no streching or letterboxing).



Charlie

[Alex Zabrovsky]

Thanks Edward, perhaps I didnt' make myself clear enough, but I wasn't refering to aDVD creation task, just a discussion about wide (supposedly 16x9) capabilities of GS100 and its appearance in editor and TV.

I would be expected a true wide format to spread the angle of view horizontally to include more data (perhaps also vertically to certain expent), but what I see from GS100 is rather zooming in and transforming to peper pixel's aspect ration, which means (zooming) almost teh same horizontal angle of view as in plain 4x3, but vertically teh image is just stretched.

[Bruce A. Christenson]

Shorten a clip on the timeline to a second or so. From the file menu, Render it to uncompressed AVI. You should be able to specify the name of the file and where you want to save it.

[Alex Zabrovsky]

ОК, thanks, about half second AVI clip,
2.5 MB size file.
Can you accept such by email ?

[Bruce A. Christenson]

You can give it a shot.

Hopefully the rendered AVI has the same characteristics as the raw AVI from capture.

brucix @ earthlink . net

[Alex Zabrovsky]

Bruce, just troed to send you the mail - it was rejected immediately (at the time of establishing connection with yoru server) claiming that "Recipient address rejected. Spammers are not allowed".

[Bruce A. Christenson]

Wow, that's harsh.

Maybe you can post some screencaps ?

[Alex Zabrovsky]

Well, perhaps no need already. :-)

After much thought I seem to making the conclusion how exactly the 16x9 is done in this cam and other similar caliber cameras.

One thing we should remember: DV standard defines frame size quite strickly - 720x480 for NTSC, so if the camera is a DV, it is expected to comply this standard, i.e. providing 720x480 image be it 4x3 or 16x9.
That means even though shooting in Wide format, the camera cannot produce image exceeding this 720x480 limitation (also called NTSC D1 in television), so it must squiz it down into that farmesize. This is done by zooming in vertically, i.e. reducing vertical resolution whilest preserving horizontal one just to get the proportions of 16x9. What I'm saying by that ? The much talken wide (16x9) in GS100 (and I suspect in any regular DV cam) doesn't earn any additional resolution (actually horizontally it is very slightly increased by GS100 which is good already) but rather by spreading and fitting the 16x9 within 720x480 framesize.

We have to realize that television D1 standard (for NTSC) does define the pixel aspect ratio as well framesize
so that 720x480 and 4x3 are tied to each other logically, but wide screen fromat does not define strickly any resolution, but aspect ratio only !

So, on real wide screen TVs I guess the pixel aspect ratio would be 16x9 indeed. Now, streaming Wide 16x9 video into such TV set we will have proper entire screen coverage even though physically there is actually less pixels vertically then if it would be on 4x3.

We can easily understand it from a PC monitor vs regular TV screen examlpe:
we know we have to get 4x3 on TV, right ? Now, dividing 720x480 will not produce 4x3 ratio, so I've asked why ?
This is because original 4x3 came from standard VGA resolution on PCs which is 640x480 - this number will give us straight 4x3. But now consider that PC monitor's pixle shaps is square, i.e. 1:1, so no any additional calclulations are necessary to achieve 4x3. Contrary, pixels on TV screen are not square, so to compensate for that (i.e. to achieve proper proprotions) we have to multiply that 640 by certain ratio. What do I mean is that physically, even though on TV we have 720 horizontal pixels as opposite to 640 on PC monitor, no any additional information is conveyed into TV screen, just these plain 640 stretched in the way to achieve proper aspect ratio.

Similar thing will happen once our transition from 4x3 to 16x9. Pixels's shape has been altered again, so without adding any aditional visual information we just take care of proper aspect ration stretching or squizing the existing image to fit 16x9 window (though in this case we indeed may lose to certain extent vertical resolution).

My mistake in understanding was that I expected wide image to be tied to 480 vertical lines and then horizontally to be widened for 16x9 by actual pixels.
BUT, due to teh nauture of DV that compliants with D1 TV standard (720x480) there is no way for such dream. :-)

I hope as soon as wide format will start catching up, there will not be D1 restriction any more to fit the actual image to, so the natural widescreen image will hold more pixels horizontally without sacrificing vertical resolution.
And then some new "wide DV" will be invented ....:-)

Please correct me if I'm wrong in my thoughts.

Alex

[Bruce A. Christenson]

That all sounds good to me.

But do you feel you have the right settings in Vegas 4?

What we need is high definition resolution with 16x9 CCDs!

[Alex Zabrovsky]

I think so. Once playing with a short test footage shot in Wide, I defined the Project properties as DV NTSC Widescreen.

HDTV wuill have to wait some time though... :-)