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Old 2004-12-30, 12:41 AM
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Re: Should I tape in widescreen or regular

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.
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Last edited by feralicious; 2004-12-30 at 12:47 AM.
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