Should I tape in widescreen or regular

[wilson]

my camera has that setting...so far I have done all widescreen and it looks better when done.....but all of these have been handhelds and I think the bars help if the camera shaky......

but I am taping this next show tripod style so I was thinking of maybe doing 4:3 although I have really like the 16.9 so far.....


opinions

[U2Lynne]

I like widescreen. I say stay with 16:9.

[Dave's PA Rental]

I also prefer widescreen...soon all of us will have HD plasma widescreen TV's, so why not shoot today with tomorrow in mind...

[Rider]

Is it really widescreen or is it just fake black bars at the top and bottom of the picture? I've seen cameras that shoot the exact same thing only they add bars to make it look letterboxed, so actually what your doing is just cutting off a whole bunch of the picture.

[dorrcoq]

I also prefer widescreen...soon all of us will have HD plasma widescreen TV's, so why not shoot today with tomorrow in mind...

SOON?????????? :hmm:

[New Homebrew]

widescreen is the way of the future.

[lucasweb]

I have a camera that has an actual 16:9 mode and i was thinking of using it for a concert coming up but i think i'll just go for 4:3 because 16:9 adds another thing that you have to deal with while editing and preparing it for a dvd which can take a lot of time. If I'm going to be doing the editing and preparing for the dvd i will stick with 4:3 but if i can convince a friend who is more experience with 16:9 to work on then i might go with 16:9, but we'll just wait and see, i have plenty of time to decide because the concert is in feburary (btw, if things do work out, i'll most likely torrent it as a TTD exclusive like the U2 Brooklyn Bridge show)

[dorrcoq]

widescreen is the way of the future.


maybe, but it will be a long time before we "ALL" have plasma TV's.

[katnapz]

Is it really widescreen or is it just fake black bars at the top and bottom of the picture? I've seen cameras that shoot the exact same thing only they add bars to make it look letterboxed, so actually what your doing is just cutting off a whole bunch of the picture.

Excellent point! There was a miniseries I downloaded once that was labeled as "widescreen", but it was pretty obvious from the little network icon in the bottom right being cut in half that someone had used that one stupid filter for TMGEnc that does the same....I think the people who do this actually do believe that "This one goes up to eleven."

BTW, when the series came out on DVD I bought it so no harm was made to the movie company....fullscreen, but that's what I expected...

[RainDawg]

Stick with 16:9....assuming that it is true anamorphic 16:9 and not fake letterboxed. It's really not hard at all to work with 16:9 video with most editing packages that I've tried, so I wouldn't worry about it being difficult. It also just looks better.

My $0.02...

[lucasweb]

So i'm hoping people hear have had experience using 16:9 to shot a concert and then make a dvd because i'll definetly ask for help here if i have any questions when i'm going through the transferring process

[feralicious]

I would definitley go with 16:9, even though you might lose a little picture quality. These days I think most cameras have 16:9, but there are two methods of achieving it and one is better quality than the other. Most consumer level cameras will put the "letterbox" into the frame and then the picture frame only uses up what's left. So the effect is that you do lose a little quality since you're not using up all the available horizontal lines of resolution, some of them are taken up by the black. The high end cameras have the better option which keeps all your lines of resolution by shooting anamorphically and squeezing the picture when you shoot it. Then when you capture it it "unsqueezes" it. Like my Canon XL-1S is anamorphic, but my Sony TRV-30 isn't. But both shoot in 16:9 without cropping the picture. You'd have to check the specs for your camera to see which way it does it and if it's not anamorphic then you will lose some resolution/quality.

I think what Rider was referring to is what katnapz was also talking about where the black is added after the fact. That actually crops the picture, which you definitely don't want.

And I would think most editing programs give you the option of which format to work in. I know Avid and FCP4 does, and I think Avid Xpress DV as well, though I don't suspect most people have those. I don't know about others, but I can't imagine they wouldn't have it as well. I use FCP4 and we've shot out DVDs with footage from both my cameras and it's fine and comes out as expected, letterboxed as 16:9 with no cropping of the picture.

[lucasweb]

Yea, my DV camera shoots anamorphic, my friends have more experience with 16:9 than i do, but i figure even if it takes me a year (highly unlikely) to learn how to do everything in the transfer process properly it will have been better to shoot in 16:9 and have people wait for it, than shoot in 4:3 and have the show for download a week or two later

[feralicious]

The only difference you have to worry about is a setting on your camera and your editing software, so that shouldn't take you a year. ;)

Another option is to shoot in 4:3 with most of the action happening in a 16:9 frame for letterboxing later, but if you're not going to utilize the whole frame then what's the point?

I'd just stick with 16:9 regardless of how your camera does it cuz you're going to drop in quality just by putting it onto DVD anyway. So make sure you keep your DV masters. And if you do any actual editing within the footage you shot I would spit that back out at full res to DV on your camera again and save that as your edited master.

[wilson]

cool....I think I will stick with 16:9 its come out well before and transfering them to dvd has been no problem with adobe....I try to use a nice wide angle when I tape shows anyway and I think that looks better with the widescreen....although 4:3 might be good for people that like to really use that zoom when its on a tripod.....it seems alot of dude that tape that way use 4:3

thanks for the imput....I think I am going to stay a 16:9 guy :lol

[lucasweb]

I've never had a problem importing 16:9, it's always the exporting, I've haven't been able to get the dvd player to generate the letterbox bars for a 4;3 television, it always plays smashed, like if your dvd player is set-up for a 16:9 screen and you actually have a 4:3, that effect, although it's not the dvd player it's the way i export it, i'll have to experiment or if someone has a guide that would be cool (I should say i have Final Cut Pro 4, my buddy has Adobe Premiere ? i don't remember which version), Also i have DVD Studio Pro 2 and i'll have to learn how to use that also. Anyway this could be all for nothing if i botch the intial taping anyway

[feralicious]

Hm, did you import it into an anamorphic project? And are you working in an anamorphic sequence? When I go into FCP4 tomorrow I'll look up my settings for my full res project and let you know what they are. The export settings probably wouldn't effect that, I don't remember anything other than what type of file and the bitrate. Did you look at the export in quicktime to see if it's letterboxed? I don't really know DVD Studio Pro myself but was able to fumble through it enough to get a playable DVD with no menus and there's a preview option you can do to see how it looks so that's another place you can check it.

[RainDawg]

lucasweb, that sounds like a mistake in authoring or encoding the disc to DVD compliant MPEG....if you tell it to encode to 4:3 but you give it a 16:9, it'll just smash everything down. You don't want letterboxed black bars, in fact, you want true 16:9 video to display. On a regular TV, it will insert these bars when it tries to display the video, but if you play it on a computer or HDTV, it should show up as regular widescreen with no extra lines added.

[lucasweb]

lucasweb, that sounds like a mistake in authoring or encoding the disc to DVD compliant MPEG....if you tell it to encode to 4:3 but you give it a 16:9, it'll just smash everything down. You don't want letterboxed black bars, in fact, you want true 16:9 video to display. On a regular TV, it will insert these bars when it tries to display the video, but if you play it on a computer or HDTV, it should show up as regular widescreen with no extra lines added.

Exactly, that's what i wanted to correct but i have plently of time to test it out and correctly before i tackle the concert, The concert that i'm going to do it for isn't even until Feb.8th, so for i'll get back to you guys after that if any drastic occurs that i can't figure out