Widescreen or Fullcreen?
 

I am filming a wedding this Saturday with two VX-2000's, and I am debating whether to do it in widecreen or fullscreen. I know that you take a resolution hit filming in the wide mode, but stylistically it looks so much better. What would everyones advice be? Should I film in wide mode, film in full mode then convert to wide in post, or should I just forget about widescreen with the vx2000 and save my pennies to upgrade to hd?

Film in 4:3 and and the bars in post. That way you don't loose any resolution, just be sure that you compensate while your filming. This has been mentioned before and is a good medium.

How exactly does that not "lose resolution", unless you're shooting with anamorphic lenses, something's got to give.

Matt - do a couple test shots and see how your camera handles "wide" shooting, see if it's acceptable or if you lose too much. I used my SD cams in wide mode all the time once I realized that framing worked better for most everything.

When you turn on the 16:9 on the vx's it somehow stretches the image or distorts it somehow. I have not used it as I have read here that it does so. Many have suggested adding the bars in post. That is where I my perception comes from.

I understand the notion of adding the bars in post, but I am left wondering how can you be sure about the framing, as I would be slightly different to take full advantage of the 16:9 dimensions.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Ta,

marks

You can't really be sure about framing when shooting 16x9 with a camera that can only display 4x3. It is mostly a guess, but after a while you get used to the squished images in your viewfinder. The results are usually acceptable.

I've never liked "getting used to the squished horizontal viewfinder". I usually connect a 1394 cable to my laptop and feed the camera signal into iMovie pre-formatted for widescreen and use the display as a monitor. Framing is much easier.

on my VX2100 i taped the top and bottom bars (two slices of a business card) to 16:9 spec in the lcd. use the framing option in the menus.

I have used the vx2000 and 2100 and for 3 years now and have been shooting in 16:9 exclusively.

If your entended audience is going to be a widescreen tv user, just render your movie out without the bars crap.

If your entended user is an analog tv, then you need to resize your image in post to fit the safe area margins. No loss in resolution or any of that crap.

If you want to export your video to the web, then you need to apply letterbox so it will look as though you were watching it on a widescreen tv.

One other thing...I use PP1.5 to capture the video...Matrox capture card. Make sure your capture settings are in widescreen mode and your project is set as a widescreen project. So, when you render out your movie, and then import the timeline into Encore, your final DVD will fill the widescreen and no cropping will occur on a widescreen tv.

This is a true widescreen presentation...no one on this planet can tell me otherwise.

Sure about that? ;)

I allways shoot 16:9 with my vx2100 and process it in post as 16:9, never had any problem with wide screen tv's, I just had a few 4:3 tv's (you hardly see those anymore in Europe, Belgium) but they displayed it in the correct aspect ratio with the horizontal black bars.

I wouldn't see any reason to shoot 4:3 with the camera adding black bars later, at least not for the image quality sake. 4:3 does give a bit sharper image (I did some 4:3 in the beginning of my career when a lot of people still had 4:3 tv's) and if I compare now I do see a minor difference, especially on big tv screens, but a client will hardly notice.

guessing were the black bars will go in post when shooting 4:3 seems like quite a risk to me but can imagine you'd get used to it, but I don't really see the advantage of it.

With the GL2's it's easy. The GL2's have a setting for a 16x9 guide display, meaning you can shoot in 4x3 but you have onscreen guides showing you your 16x9 boundaries. In post, just add some black bars and render and you're done ... no resolution loss.

It sure looks like crap on a 32"+ LCD/Plasma to me. Will the bride care? Probably not.

Looks great on a regular CRT though.

I proof all of my work on a 50" plasma...no issues so far...just don't sit so damn close...I usually sit back about 10' ( reccomended distance). Granted, it ain't HD, but looks just fine.

I really hope to begin shooting in HD within the next year or so. Hopefully, Blueray burning issues and adobe software will get thier act together by then.

Don't know how much you've got invested in SD cams right now but I would think if you're satisfied with the SD 16:9 you could hold out longer than this. It's my feeling that most clients will soon complain more about the 4:3 ratio than they will the fact it's shot in SD. (Since most TV's bought today are widescreen).

In other words... I think native widescreen is a more compelling reason to upgrade to HDV than the enhanced resolution itself because of all the SD content still around. So if you're already getting spectacular 16:9 results with what you have, maybe just hang in there a bit longer. Others are upgrading to HDV and downconverting that footage to SD for delivery reasons and it does look better but again, if yours is fine...

The great thing about shooting wide is being able to do over the shoulder close ups, this is great with vows ect.