? about xha1 and rendering
 

Heres the problem: I shot some HD footage but when I go to render to a dvd, i'm getting the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen (not a full picture). When I plug my camera directly into my high def flat screen, I get a full picture. Is it possible to get a full screen when down converting to a dvd? If I were to burn the project to blu-ray, would i get a full screen?

Hi Kevin. It could be that your render settings are not widescreen, or it could be that your DVD player/TV combination is not set up properly. It is definitely possible to make widescreen DVDs from XH-A1 HDV footage.

If you could provide more details of how you are making the DVD, and how you are playing it back, I think you should be able to get a solution fairly easily.

Richard

I am using windows movie maker. Not only am I not getting the full screen, my picture is not very sharp at all. WHen I plug the camera directly to the tv the pictures is incredible. Is this perhaps a limitation of movie maker? I;m starting to get a little worried beause all my footage was shot in hdv and I was under the impression that I could burn to dvds and have a full screen. I just tried it in a television that is not widie screen, and i'm still getting the bars at the top and bottom. I'm playing it back in a reagular dvd player. Regular movies paly fine. I also tried a different dvd player and i'm getting the same resullts. When I use the titles from movie maker and the movie maker dvd menu, there coming out fine taking up the whole screen. Its just the footage on my tape that seems to be a problem. Any thoughts?

If you shot in HD, then the aspect ratio is 16x9 (widescreen). If you are playing back on a standard TV (4:3) that is not widescreen then you will get black bars on the top and bottom. There is no way around this unless you crop the left and right edges of the picture to produce a 4:3 image. Anything else would result in a vertically stretched picture and people would look very thin. You just can't put a rectangle into a square without stretching it or chopping the sides off.

Brian, I tried it on both a wide screen and regular tv, same result.

Hi Kevin..........
 

Think there is a bit of confusion surrounding this.

Windows Movie Maker (well, my version anyway) will only ingest SD (ie DV), which means you're downrezing your HD (HDV) video to SD to get it onto your system.

If you're plugging the camera into a (full) HD screen using the Component cable, yep, it's going to look pretty spectacular.

Once you've downrezed it to SD that spectacular ain't gonna be no more.

Given that you're obviously losing more than just the downrez to SD (well, you must be to have black bars at the top and bottom on a 16:9 screen) I think you need to go back to square one and check every camera setting and every MM setting to see where you're truncating this video.

There's so many possibilities I won't even start to go through them (and my knowledge of MM consists of the 10 minutes I just spent playing with it to figure out what was going on).


CS

Chris, whats "MM"? I should also note that I am capturing the footage with the XHA1 and not a deck.

Just tried it in Pinnicale and i'm getting the same result.

"mm" =
 

Movie Maker.

If you're getting the same result with another app. then it's either a setting on the camera (setting it for 4:3 out, perhaps?) or you're making the same mistake with the second app as you were with the first.

I can't think of any other way you get black bars top and bottom (having started with 16:9) except cropping it to 4:3 somewhere, then stretching it back to 16:9, turning it to mush in the process.


CS

Chris S: Do you think that the correct footage is actually there and its jsut a question of exporting it properly?

Also, when your in vcr mode with the camera, the signal out gives 3 options Auto, hdv and I think the third is standard, which setting should I be using?

Heres another thought, is it possible that this may be a hardware problem? I just purchased a used pc that i'm using for the first time. Could an insuffcient graphic card cause this?

Hmm........
 

OK, from the top.............

You shot HDV (16:9 fixed, cannot be varied) in either 60i or 30f, right?

If you connect the camera to a (full) HD (1920 X 1080) TV and play that footage back straight from the camera, you should have full screen 16:9 HD video, yep?

OK, so, to get that into MM you have to dump it down to DV, 'cos MM will NOT accept HDV.

To do that you need to fire up the camera in VCR mode, go to Menu, Signal Setup and turn [HD DOWN-CONV] to ON (make sure the camera IS NOT connected to the PC by Firewire at the time as it won't let you change anything in that mode).

What I can't answer (as I never, ever, ever use my A1 for SD of any flavour) is what happens if you also turn [LETTERBOX] to ON as well.

I suspect, but someone else will have to verify, it takes your 16:9 HDV and chops the top and bottom off to give, er, a mess.

As for the PLAYBACK STD I would have said AUTO, but again I've never used it set to anything else.

There must be someone here who can give you chapter and verse about these settings.

It's only rocket science if you've never used 'em.

CS

The problem has been solved! Richard, you were correct, the dvd/tv combo was not
set-up properly. Chris and Brian , thanks for your input.