How does Widescreen work?
 

So if i have the camera in16x9 mode. I know if i preview on a tv straight from the camera, its just really stretched and what not. If i import to the computer and then export to a DVD. Will it have the bars? or will it just be streched still? Do i have to matt bars over the Widescreen video?

If you make your widescreen DVD properly it will set an anamorphic flag. When it's played back on a DVD player connected to a 16:9 TV it will correctly fill the screen at full resolution. But when connected to a 4:3 TV the DVD player itself will provide the letterbox.

This all assumes that the owner of the DVD player has properly configured it to match their type of TV. Most players default to 4:3 TV's so they would need to change that to 16:9 if using a widescreen TV.

The image is still 720X480 pixels, but the horizontal pixels are stretched out to form a 16:9 aspect ratio when you tell your NLE that you are capturing 'anamorphic'. The technique varies from NLE to NLE, but look for a check box or a preset in your capture preferences.

There are several threads on the forum discussing this topic. Might want to scroll down a bit and read some of them to help get you going.

-gb-

K, ill read all the post's i can find but thanks for the quick response guys. Ill check it all out.