Canon hg21 standard def setup?
 

Hello,

Can the HG21 shoot in standard def (720x480)?
If so, how do yo set this up on the camera?
I'm asking because I have a two cam shoot
(1 cam is a vx2100 and the other is the HG21)
tomorrow and will be using a friends hg21. Since
the vx2100 shoots standard def I need to match
the hg21.

Thanks,
Troy

Selecting the Video Quality (Recording Mode) for HG21
 

Open the LCD panel. Press the FUNC button which is the first one in the row of buttons along the bottom of the LCD panel.

Use the "joystick" button in the middle of the left edge of the LCD panel to scroll down the menu choices along the left side of the screen until you get to the recording mode icon. (On my LCD screen, recording mode is the fifth icon, after the digital effect icon.)

Once you get to the recording mode icon, use the "joystick" button to scroll to the right along the mode choice displayed at the bottom of the LCD screen. SP is the second last choice in the row of choices. Once you have SP highlighted, press the "joystick" button to "set" your choice.

Press FUNC button to finish. The LCD should return to ready mode and you should see SP displayed in the left bottom half of the screen if your screen is set to display information.

Hi Patricia,

I followed these steps and the SP displayed in the LCD. However, when I loaded the video from the cam to my sony vegas software the video says 1440x1080 and two black bars appear at top and bottom. By the way, I recorded to the HDD. Ooops I also set the cam to 480 for the component output although this probably means nothing. What I'm I doing wrong? Or is it just not possible to rec in SP 720x480 with this cam?

Thanks,
Troy

It doesn't matter how the cameras are set up for a 2 camera shoot. I recently did a shoot with a GL2 and an HF21. On the HF21 I shot in one of the middle HD modes. I'm using an Vegas 5 that doesn't accept AVCHD video so I converted the HF21 footage to widescreen DV for editing in Vegas. The GL2 footage was Normal DV. To eliminate the black bars you can use the Vegas Pan/Crop feature and "Match the Output Aspect Ratio" to get both cameras to match.

Hi Kevin,

I copied the video files from the hg21 harddrive to my pc for editing in vegas 8. The files when displayed in vegas are 1440x1080 and in MTS format. Can you tell me how you converted your video to widescreen? It would also be helpful if you gave me the steps you used in the PAN/CROP to change the video so that the black bars go away? I would really appreciate.

Thanks,
Troy

HG21 video mode setting
 

Sorry, Troy. Can't help you with that. Kelvin's reply looks helpful.

no problem. Got it figured out now. thanks.

Just to clear up some confusion here
 

The original poster wanted to record in standard definition on HG-21. This cannot be done. Canon's HG-21 is a High-definition AVCHD camcorder. There are no AVCHD camcorders on the market today that can record in standard definition.

The advice given above only changes encoding bitrate (and consequently, image quality). The maximum bitrate (17Mbps) will capture and encode at 1920x1080, while all other lower bitrates will encode in 1440x1080. This is NOT a 4:3 image, however. It is an anamorphic 16:9 image, exactly the same size as the full HD 1920x1080, except the pixels are stretched a bit to fill the 16:9 aspect.

As for editing a mixed footage from SD and HD sources, all modern NLEs are capable of doing this. If your SD footage is shot at 16:9 aspect ratio, there is nothing of importance to be done. If the output format of your project is SD in 4:3 ratio, the you'll need to "pan&scan" your HD footage in order to eliminate letterboxing (unless you actually want to keep the black bars on top and bottom). This has already been explained above.

Long story short: AVCHD camcorders can ONLY shoot HD. HDV camcorders (those that use MiniDV tapes) often have SD option, as they are built to be compatible with old DV tapes.

Actually, Canon's current AVCHD camcorders only shoot in HD - and offer no SD downconversion at all whatsoever. This means that you will need to acquire good downconversion software for the PC just to manually convert HD to SD. Sony's AVCHD camcorders - at least my particular CX100 and several other lower-end models - do have an SD recording mode; however, when set to SD, they record in MPEG-2 rather than AVC.

Thus, it depends on the manufacturer.

The new Canon AVCHD camcorders coming this Spring will still not be able to record in SD per se. However, most (though not all) of them (specifically, the entire HF-S2#(#) series plus those models in the HF-M and HF-R lines which have built-in flash memory) will be able to downconvert HD content that's already been recorded in the camcorder to 16:9 widescreen SD within the camcorder itself (in this case, you will end up with two copies of the same video, one in HD and the other in SD, written onto the built-in flash memory and/or removable SDHC memory cards).

Standard-definition miniDV, on the other hand, does not natively support even 16:9 widescreen standard-def, let alone HD. Its native aspect ratio is 4:3. Thus, "fake widescreen" had to be created during the recording on miniDV by throwing away horizontal lines (and thus vertical resolution).

As a result, when mixing footage from both of the OP's cameras, the widescreen SD files from any of the forthcoming Canons would still have to be cropped (pan-and-scanned) or letterboxed.