Capture Question / 640x480 or 720x480
 

Is it true that DV firewire capture has standard settings that normally you can't change? I have someone doing some video editing for me and they are telling me the video I gave him to edit is 640X480 and it should be at 720x480. The video was shoot on an XL1s.

Could it have been rendered to that quality when I made the data DVD for him? All I did was render some uncompressed mini dv video with Vegas 7.0 and bounced it down to an .avi NTSC DV. It says the size is 720x480 when you choose .avi NTSC DV.

That REALLY scares me because that might mean I captured the whole film into the computer at 640x480 instead of 720x480!!

Any ideas?

ok, lucky I looked at my files and the uncompressed avi's from the mini dv's are 720x480 so it's not on the capturing side.

When I look at my render options in Vegas its says its rendering 720x480 (NTSC DV), so I have no idea where the lower quality / 640x480 compression is coming from.

I've never heard of that either.
What NLE is the other person using?
BTW, assuming it was a firewire capture, this only happens at 720 x 480.

Information time
 

ok, first of all DV *is* compressed. It's in a 4:1:1 colorspace (4:4:4 would be uncompressed) and it's stored at 25 Megabits/second (also not an uncompressed).

DV desn't have a square pixel aspect ratio so it is actually 654x480 pixels (or within half a pixel of that actually), but if your friends app is worth much it shoud detect the non square P.A.R. (pixel aspect ratio).

don't know if that helps you but hey, knowledge is power :)

Dave

Yes it was captured with firewire, and he is using Final Cut Pro.

I've given miniDV material to FCP places before and no one has ever siad that it's 640 x 480.
Idon't know FCP at all but maybe he's selected or unselected something he shouldn't have?