16:9 or 4:3 or ???

A question I got on this thread

Hans

Don't you find the quality of the 16:9 mode better than cropping the 4:3 pic? The electronic cropping retains a bit more resolution than software interpolation.

scubadru,

It was only for the online trailer I used this technique, so as long as the final output is at such a low resolution, I don't think that you will be able to see any difference.

However, I must admit that I have never used the 16:9 setting on my PD-170, and I was having the impression, that the 16:9 setting only squeeze the image so that it apears to be 16:9, and thereby creating some distortion. In other words, the 16:9 setting on the PD-170, is not realy true 16:9.

Or is there something here, that I am totally misunderstanding ?

I was hired for a 6:9 job a while back with my VX2000. It was unfortunately cancelled but I did a lot of research and testing into the best way to do 16:9.

The conclusion was that the best way, especially if you're doing your own editing, was to shoot 4:3 and mask the monitor down to 16:9, then crop in post. Difficult to do though if you don't have an external monitor. This option gives you some leeway to move the frame up and down in post.

The camera's 16:9 setting was said by several people to be not as good, although I had trouble seeing the difference myself. They reckoned the camera was doing some weird resampling as opposed to just cropping.

Another option is to put a letterbox bitmap mask on your memory stick and use memory mix mode, but that's more hassle for little benefit.

Skaw

The incamera 16:9 on the PD170 is electronic cropping. the sensors are 4:3 native.

Nick

If you are using a good machine like the Snell/Wilcox ARC, I'd agree with shooting 4:3. If you are using a NLE like AVID or FCP, and merely upsizing to fit 16:9. Then why bother? The incamera cropping is as good as (if not slightly better than) most software solutions. Why bother with the extra rendering?

The complaints about the incamera 16:9 modes were mostly on the older generation VX1k and esp the Canon XL1, which were atrocious.

If you do a search in the BBC archives I remember the tech department did a test on this, with results very similar to mine.

Drew I obviously have some distortion around the edges of my memory because in the discussion thread about it here, most people were fairly happy with the camera's 16:9 mode, but one or two mentioned a "strained" look.

A deciding factors for me that I forgot to mention was that shooting 4:3 would allow me to monitor at the correct aspect ratio on my Gates external monitor. The 16:9 mode meant I had to look at a squeezed image, which made composition more difficult.

I don't have my camera with me to verify but when I shot 16:9 I remember the monitor would have letterbox mode automatically. I believe your gates monitor may not have ID1 system compatibility but it really should.

As for DVinfo or any other info online, I'd verify any queries regarding "broadcast" quality by those who set the programming standards. BBC, NGC and Discovery have standards (which they obviously bend when they purchase programming vs producing). I find the BBC techs to be the most up to date in testing and releasing such info.

Okey here I am again, more 16:9 questions.

As I understand it, there are 2 different ways of getting 16:9 in SDV.

One way is simply to letterbox a 4:3 video, which means adding black color bars at the top and at the bottom of the video.

The other way, is to set the settings in the NLE to a 16:9 project, and then you need video shot on a camera with a true 16:9 chip. The resulting video will be in 16:9 format, but witout colorbars at the top and bottom. In this video there will be information embedded, so that a true 16:9 tv will show the video as 16:9, and a 4:3 tv will show 16:9 aswell, but the 4:3 TV will ad the black color bars.

So tekkies, am I right on this ?

Yes you can do that with 4.3 but 16.9 is wider than 4.3 as well. You can simply change the pixel aspect ratio of the 4.3 in your NLE to the same as 16.9 but the image will look out of shape abit. What you really need to do is zoom in till the 4.3 fills the width/height of 16.9 but then you loose quality.

16.9 is just that and it will fill the whole screen on a 16.9 TV. No info is added to it with black bars, it's done by the TV itself or DVD player or camera etc.

On a 4.3 TV the 16.9 will be made to fit the screen as well. No black bars will be added but it will appear that way, the 16.9 picture is simply made smaller to fit the 4.3 screen hence a black area both top and botton of the screen.

Just like if you display the 4.3 on a 16.9, then you get empty black areas each side of the 4.3.

You can see the same results with your HDV camera by switching it from 4.3 to 16.9 as you watch it on the 4.3 TV.

The 16.9 setting on those cameras is not very good. You need a true 16.9 camera.

Thanks Wags for the reply.

I am getting nuts trying to figure out the different formats

I think that the option 2 that i was listing above, is what is called anamorphic widescreen, where a 16:9 image is "packed" into a 4:3 image, and then somehow magically outfolds itself to a 16:9 TV ?

Lately I have been even more confused, as one of the channels here in Denmark is now transmitting in widescreen only (not HD! though), and on my 16:9 tv, I now get black bars on the sides when the ocassinal image is in 4:3, normally during news, where they use whatever footage they get.

So they don't transmit in HD, and they don't transmit in 4:3, but they doo transmit in 16:9, so it's not HD, and it's not SD, so what the f... is the format ????

Almighthy Wags - Master Drew - Any ???

This confuses me too Skaw, and the following might not be spot on, but it sounds like they're transmitting in PAL widescreen which is still 720 x 576 but the pixel aspect ratio is 1.4568 to achieve the 16:9 ratio. In other words the pixels are more horizontally rectangular than 4:3 broadcasts. And it sounds like the station are pillar boxing any 4:3 footage they have so it has black lines either side instead of being stretched horizontally.

You're using Vegas aren't you Skaw? Browse through the alternative templates in Project Properties and all might become clear.

And it sounds like the station are pillar boxing any 4:3 footage they have so it has black lines either side instead of being stretched horizontally.

You're using Vegas aren't you Skaw? Browse through the alternative templates in Project Properties and all might become clear.

Okey, it does'nt matter.

- at new year, I promised myself to focus more on getting the good stories done instead of the everlasting chase to figure out the new specs of whatever hardware or software there might land on planet earth.