Newbie needs 16:9 help, please!
 

Hi Guys,

Just moved up from an XM2 to an XL2 and have shot my first footage in 16:9.

When I capture it I get a frame size of 768x432. I was always under the impression that here in PAL land, dv frame size was 720x576 regardless of whether its 4:3 or 16:9 and that its pixel aspect ratio that determines the shape of the frame.

In Premiere Pro the frame size for both standard and widescreen projects is shown as 720x576. I set up a widescreen project but the footage looks squashed (as I expected it would).

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,
Rog

Hi Roger. Are you using firewire to capture? This is the best way as there is no recompression or resizing of the video footage that is already on the DV tape.

Using firewire, you should be capturing as DV AVI files, and, as you say, they should be 720x576 for PAL video.

If for any reason you are unable to set up Premiere to capture as DV AVI, you could try downloading a free capture application called Scenalyzer which works very well. You have to use firewire though.

Richard

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the help. Think I've got it sussed now.

I use Premiere Pro on a Mac for editing, and as I don't like the way Premiere spits the clips in scene detect on a Mac I use Live Capture Plus/CatDV (Mac equivalent of Scenalyzer) for capturing via firewire.

I was capturing the clips as .mov files which gave me the 768x432 size but on changing the settings to capture as .dv files I now get the correct 720x576 frame size.

Roger