So, in order to get the finished product on DVD (in 16x9) and make it playable on the simple DVD players, will the initial picture (shot with anamorphic adaptor on 16x9) be cropped? If yes, is it going to cropped from the top-bootom or right-left? I am a bit confused.

P.S. The look of the footage is amazing!

I'm a little fuzzy about what you're asking. If you want to convert 2.35:1 footage to 16:9, then yes, you'd have to crop it. I don't know why you would want to do that though, so I'm assuming you were asking if 2.35:1 footage would have to be placed in a 16:9 stream with mattes...

In that case, yes, you'd have to export the footage as letterboxed 16:9 in order to go to DVD, because the only aspect ratios that DVD players will accept are 4:3 and 16:9. Any footage with an aspect ratio other than one of these two will have to fit into one of those two shapes with either letterbox or pillarbox mattes, depending on the situation.

2.35:1 is wider than 16:9, so the black bars would be on the top and bottom (i.e. in a letterbox configuration).

In case Jarrod's assumption about what you were asking is wrong, and you mean how do you get basic 16:9 on a DVD, it's simple. Set the dial on your XL2 to 16:9, shoot, edit and burn.

If he's right, then I can't imagine why you would want to go trough all that to get a wider aspect ratio. I don't think it would look that great by the time you were finished, either. And since you would have to crop anyway, why not just shoot and capture 16:9 then matte to 2.35:1?

We have gone WAY off topic.

Bottom line is that if you like shooting 2.35:1 and you are going to something higher resolution then a normal DVD then using this adaptor would be a good choice. If you are not shooting 2.35:1 then you really get no benefit from it.

I through out the idea of shooting 4X3 with the camera in 16X9 mode but that was just a cool side effect. Really its not totally practical.

While on the subject, how do you even get the 960 vertical pixels out of the XL2 in 16:9 mode?

It ends on the tape at 720, so where do the 240 pixels go? Or a better question would be.. Why does the sensor have 960 pixels, if dv only supports 720?

A camera sensor like a CCD doesn't actually have pixels, it has photosites, and it's also an analog device so the electrical information from those photosites has to be converted into digital info anyway. It is not necessary for there to be a 1:1 ratio between the number of physical photosites and the number of digitally recorded pixels -- and generally it looks better to have more photosites due to oversampling.

Hooray! This counts as the Post of the Day and it's not even noon yet.

Thanks David,