Rendering PAL DV Widescreen properly
 

Hi,

I recently bought a Panasonic NV-GS320 standard definition camcorder. I've made a video to test it out with, and figured out how to properly set up a project and import the footage from the camcorder (properly configuring the pixel aspect ratio so that it doesn't appear stretched).
I wanted to do a render to see how it looked, so I did so, using the PAL DV Widescreen presets in WMV to output it. When I play it back it's stretched to 4:3 mode. Obviously I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what.
I've Googled the problem and also searched here and can't find an answer that tells me how to properly render it.

Any help on how to render PAL DV Widescreen video both for the web (roughly 30MB tops for about 2 minutes of standard def video), and for DVDs, would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

Just have a double-check in the preset's settings as to whether it is exporting to DV PAL Widescreen 16:9 (1.422) in the Pixel Aspect Ratio setting.

I remember having this trouble, my project was widescreen but I had to manually change this setting to widescreen when exporting to wmv.

What program are you using to edit / export?

Oh yeah, sorry! I completely forgot to mention I'm using Sony Vegas 7.

It does definitely seem to be set to export with a 1.422 aspect ratio, too.

when you export as a DV widescreen file the information is stored in exactly the same way as if it where standard DV - the only thing that changes is the pixel aspect ratio - just one number that is presumably stored somewhere with the video stream. my theory is that media player simply doesn't look at this number and assumes it 4:3 - hence the incorrect playback. if you use VLC you can set the aspect ratio manually to get it to look right.

one option is to re-render to video with square pixels and increase the number of pixels in the horizontal (or decrease vertical) accordingly so you get the right aspect i.e. 16:9 - definitely what i would recommend for web delivery. this always works!

I'm still not having much luck with it. To increase the horizontal field do I need to multiply it by 1.4568?

Also, is this only a PAL issue? I'm assuming NTSC footage is a lot easier to render.

Harv

I had this problem with Vegas. I just changed the size to be 1049x576 - which is 720 x 1.4568 (which is Vegas' aspect ration for 16:9 PAL)

Ian