Crop down to 4:3 from 16:9?
 

I have a camera that shoots real 16:9 and was wondering if in post I can crop the sides down to 4:3? This would mean there is no reason for me to shoot in 4:3 mode since I can effectively get more pixels in 16:9 mode (other than framing purposes). I dont want to edit in 16:9 if I am going to get a squished image on 4:3 tv's, but if I can just mask the sides for 4:3 tvs and not lose resolution, I would prefer to do that. I mainly use vegas. Thanks

If you author DVD as 16x9 you won't get squished image on 4x3 TV. It is going to be letterboxed by DVD player.
Just get any widescreen movie and watch it on 4x3 TV - you see absolutely proper image.

I was actually wondering the same thing. My Canon Optura 300 shoots in 16x9 mode. There is a higher definition mode in 16x9 too. I like that setting and was wondering what would happen if I always shoot in that mode and wanted to see it on a regular 4:3 TV. When I played the Dv footage right from the camera, I saw a squished image. I played with the settings on my Sony Vega and saw a 16x9 menu option. That fixed the problem and allowed me to see the video as normal wide screen. As it played, and the parts where I switched from widescreen to regular mode during filming, I had to then keep changing the Sony TV menu back and forth to my wife's chagrin. I wondered what would happen if I just encoded the video to DVD then played it. I will experiment with it I guess.

Michael, you are forcing TV into 16x9 mode (known also as anamorphic squeeze) manually while DV stream played from camera isn't recognized by your TV as 16x9 because it simply doesn't have the flag inside it. When you encode DVD in widescreen mode, 16x9 flag will be present in MPEG2 stream and your DVD player and/or TV will format output properly.

P.S. I assume that your TV is 4x3 since you have that 16x9 option. To get maximum resolution out of DVDs you have to set TV format in DVD player as '16x9' or '4x3 with 16x9 option' (if available). This way DVD player will not letterbox anamorphic stream by removing about 25% of horizontal lines but deliver complete image to TV and TV should take care of automaticallly engaging 16x9 mode when anamorphic flag is present in the stream.

Andriy, thanks for the tip about the DVD setting. I never thought of that. I will render some Mpeg2 in 16x9 today and check the output on my DVD player tonight.