Shoot in HDV downconvert to DV 4:3 ?
 

Is it possible to shoot in HDV and downconvert to DV 4:3 with the FX1 ? If so, how please ?
Cheers
Mike

As far as I know thats only possible on the fly with the z1. Mine does so.

In post, of course, You can alway crop the sides an downconvert from HDV, which is the same as the z1 does.

Peter

Mike,
What the FX1 will do is to downconvert to 4:3, but as a letterboxed image (black bars top and bottom) of your original 16:9 material.

Robin

And it works fine. See the DVC5 film "Proof of God" at this site:

http://makeyourfilm.net/Download.html

First Scenes were shot in 16:9 HDV with the FX1, and down converted in camera to 4:3DV by firewire transfer. The scenes in the darkened office (last half essentilly) Shot with VX2000 with a 16:9 matte added to match FX1 matte.

Of course, you can also shoot 4:3 with FX1 also.

Letterbox
 

I am shooting HDV, downconverting to Letterbox with the Z1; it retains the entire content of the 16:9 image and looks very good.

Thanks for the responses.
I would prefer to shoot in HDV as the word is that downconverting from HDV to DV gives a better picture than shooting in DV - on the FX1 at least. However in a multicamera shoot downconverted letterboxed footage from the FX1 would not go well with standard 4:3 shot by 2 DSR300s. What would be the best way to make use of footage from the FX1 intercut with the DSRs ?

If you are shooting in 16:9, you're going to have to crop it in edit. Otherwise, there will be distortion. Crop by individual scenes on the time line of your editor. What editing system are you using ? Each has their own way of dealing with it. In Premiere Pro, if I recall, actually brought the hdv file into the 4:3 time line. If I wanted to, I could have zoomed and adjusted it to fill the 4:3 screen. I chose in the film to make everything letterbox, but it should work the other way to.

Thanks all.
I use Premiere 6.5 with Canopus RT2. Yes I could do as you suggest Chris - zoom and adjust in post - but wouldn't that degrade the image to the point when I might as well have shot in DV 4:3 to start with ?
Cheers
Mike

I am think that is true, though I am no expert in this stuff. If you shot it in 4:3 in the FX1, you will get all the information for every line in the 4:3 as you transfer it to the computer file. Now if you capture 16:9 and downcovert to 16:9 DV, believe you will get the same size DV, but the bars at top and bottom contain no image information. Now if you stretch the image to the full 4:3 and in process lop off sides, it would seem you are losing resolution.

So, plan B, take all of your 16:9 HDV footage into a HDV time line, crop it there, and then render it. I've never tried that, but I might look at that on Premiere Pro tonight. I have 1.51 and 2.0

This is a great forum, glad I've found it. Already learned a bunch about my camera just from reading old posts.

After reading all the repsonses in this post, I had a question:

I recently purchased an FX-1. Here's how I shoot - Set the camera to HD, and record onto the tape in the HD format. I then capture this footage from the camera to premiere using the DV convert method in the camera. I do this because I don't yet need to edit in HD, but I shoot in that format in case for the future.

Once in the premiere timeline, I use a setting in my Matrox RTx100 that automatically resizes the footage from 16:9 to 4:3. Obviously, this forces me to lose image on the left and right sides, but I know that when I shoot. I do this because some of my customers do not like the letterbox look, and want the video full-screen.

My questions are:
1. Is this the proper way to keep the best quality while shooting in HD, and editing in SD?
2. Do you lose quality resizing from 16:9 to 4:3? I noticed one poster mention you lose resolution, so just checking to get more details or other options if that is the case.

Thanks.

I don't use Matrox, but I am otherwise set up pretty much the same way you are. I believe the way to preserve the best quality possible under the circumstances you describe, is to actually capture the footage you've shot in HDV to your computer as 16:9 HDV, then pull it into the timeline, and crop it from there. It simply gives you more digital information to work with to render your final film.

Absent that option, I would capture as a 16:9 DV the crop in editing, so you have more control over the cropping. I think you will loose some resolution.

Finally, if this is certain to be a 4:3 DV project, why not shoot the original in the 4:3 DV option with the the FX1. I think that will like improve your end product over importing 16:9 and then cropping off the ends, and resizing.

Anyone else of that opinion ?

Thanks Chris. I will do some tests on capturing in HD then convert in Premiere instead of downconverting in the cam, and see if there are quality differences.

The only reason I don't just shoot in SD is because there are slight possibilities that some of my customers will want the meetings/events in HD in the future. So I don't wanna risk not having it, and it is a good selling point saying "I shoot in HD if you need in the future".