16:9 'True' Format

[Allan Brown]

Wide Screen Edited Video.

I have a small travel company specialising in taking groups of from 2 to 4 retired folk to the Rocky Mountain Areas of USA/Canada. Subsequent to their holiday, they each receive a video diary record of their trip. Just recently, there have been a couple of request for 16:9 [wide screen]? format — something we have not done. Currently we use the Sony CDRTRV900E cameras. They have the facility for this format, but I believe I heard somewhere that this is not 'True 16:9' — whatever that means!

Using these cameras, will the result be as good quality as in usual format after editing offline? Or will clients be receiving an inferior product? If so, and assuming it would be an economical proposition, are there cameras that do offer TRUE 16:9 format and should we move in this direction at this time? All advice welcomed. And thank you in advance.


------------------

[Chris Longley]

I think that some cams use a digital crop and zoom effect to achieve the ratio. Image quality drops a little.

Why not just try some 16.9 shooting and see?

If you can tell little or no difference I doubt your customers will.

It does leave you with the problem of producing two types of video. Do you shoot two lots? Or do you shoot 16.9 and pan/scan it in software to produce a video for 4.3 customers?

It would be interesting to hear the comments of others who do this, anyone?

[mike velte]

For all you want to know about wide screen go to:http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/index.html
They have 3 neat Premiere plug-ins that do the job...free!!
www.video2stream.com (http://www.video2stream.com)

[tom hardwick]

Your TRV900 will shoot in 16:9 and the v/finders will show you a letterboxed picture. The tape will play into a 16:9 TV and fill the screen (all 576 horizontal lines will light). .. BUT .. a convertional 4:3 TV will stretch the picture out to fill the whole screen, so making everything look tall and thin.

You face a few problems. Unless everyone on the flight wants a 16:9 version of the trip you'll have to make an aspect ratio decision before you fly. Rendering the entire movie later to make a pillarbox or letterbox version is very time consuming.

Presumably these are NTSC folk you're transporting? Are they asking for NTSC copies in 16:9? Unusual this when there are so few sets about.

The TRV900 does an excellent job of shooting in 16:9 and on a good w/screen TV it looks excellent. But in reality there is definition loss in both the vertical and horizontal plane. Don't let that put you off as the far nicer 16:9 format makes 4:3 look very dated.

tom.

[Unicorn]

Provided you have enough disk space for the temporary files, letterboxing DV footage only takes about five minutes per minute of footage on my PC (PIII-550). Now, that's five hours of CPU time for an hour-long video, but I just leave it rendering overnight.

Otherwise, the TRV900's 16:9 format won't be as good as shooting with a true 16:9 camera, but it isn't bad... you may actually find you gain some vertical resolution compared to shooting 4:3, because you're not wasting 1/4 of the DV bandwidth compressing details outside the area you're interested in.

[jez275]

Mike,

Sorry to be a pain, but I couldn't find the Premiere plug-ins at the Digital Bits.

Where are they?

Cheers

Jez

[mike velte]

Jez...I am the one who is the pain. This is where I really found those plug-ins; http://www.mykaskin.freeserve.co.uk/myksvideopages/
I have not tested them yet, but Ross Mclennan says they work easy!

[darrengambrell]

I just downloaded the 16:9 to 4:3 plug in from this site and all I get is a black screen - anyone else used it?

>http://www.mykaskin.freeserve.co.uk/myksvideopages/
>I have not tested them yet, but Ross Mclennan says they work easy!