I have one quick question.

If you shoot 16:9 on an Xl1s, will is display correctly on a widescreen tv? This may be a dumb quesiton buy you never know...I mean...will it display correctly without image artifacts etc? I don't have access to one and I was just curious.
I know how everyone calls it fake 16:9, so I'm not sure it will be displayed "fake" on a widescreen tv somehow.

If I am not mistaken, then yes. It will play correctly in the widescreen tv.

Yes, the television, at least Sony, recognizes it as 16X9 and fills the screen appropriately. Or stretches it.

Cheers!

This may be somewhat dependent on how you capture and output in your NLE. There's supposed to be a signal embedded in the DV stream to indicate 16:9. Be sure to flag your footage as such to insure that this happens.

hey you guys from jersey, phili and DC.

i'm sorry to interrupt but as i was reading this i thought you might be able to answer my question as well. it has nothing to do with this topic however.

i'm looking to get a camera and am looking for a shop to go look at cameras before i buy a new one.

do any of you know of anything in the b-more, DC, pa, delaware area that i might be able to look at the canons and panasonics?

i know B&H in new york but didn't want to have to make the 4 hour trip up there in i didn't have to.

thanks a lot and sorry to add this off topic reply.

thanks again. J.

Jeremy,

You may want to check out Videosmith in Philly. http://www.videosmith.com Check their website for phone #, address, etc.

HTH,

Bill

excellent thanks. that's about 3 hours from me i think. but closer than new york.

thanks bill.

anyone else have any suggestions?

<<<-- Originally posted by Bill Markel : You may want to check out Videosmith in Philly -->>>

Wow, I saw this website long ago but had no idea they were located in Philadelphia, in fact just a couple miles from our production center! They should really advertise somewhere, like one of the trade mags cause I would have gladly dropped a few bucks there instead of dealing with out of town places. I never even saw them listed in the local yellow pages either. Thanks for the tip, will have to check them out.

I've bought some extras for my camera there. They're good people. Very helpful.

Bill

Just a thought.

1) Always shoot in 16:9

2) Post it in 4:3
- Stretch the 16:9 footage to the left and right boundaries of the 4:3 composition. Thus creating the horizonal 16:9 borders which will show up on a regular fullscreen TV.
-If full screen is required, then simply let the 16:9 footage overflow the 4:3 composition workspace? So basically the composition boundaries crop the overflow from the 16:9 footage.

Wouldn't this make sense?

Not sure if I understand the last part. Are you suggesting turning 16:9 footage into 4:3 by chopping off the left and right side. Very bad idea. Using a camera like the XL-1s, you throw away 25% of the available pixels in 16:9 mode, creating a 720x360 image. If you later chop off the sides to recreate a 4:3 image you'd be discarding another 25% of the pixels, effectively reducing your resolution to 480x360. I doubt that you'll be happy with the results after after throwing away 50% of your image data....

If you dropped the left and right extra from the 16:9 it would be just as if you shot in 4:3 originally and the camera didn't capture that extra bits to the left and right that overflow the 4:3.

That's what I do, and it works the same as if I shot originally in 4:3 but now I also have the option of also using 16:9 without having to reshoot.

Here's the problem with this idea. When you switch to 16:9 mode it takes your 720x480 image and crops the top and bottom off, ending up with a 720x360 image. Then it's stretched back into an anamorphic 720x480 image. But you've lost 25% of the vertical resolution.

So if you take the resulting 16:9 and chop off the right and left side to make it into 4:3 you're throwing away another 25% of the original. It has the same effect as though the original image was only 480x360. So you're really not producing an image that comes nearly up to the quality that the camera is capable of. You have literally thrown out 50% of your resolution. If that works for you, fine. From a technical point of view it won't give you very good results.

I would letterbox the footage. That way you "only" loose the
vertical resolution and not the extra loss Boyd talks about.

In premiere just start a 4:3 project, import the 16:9 footage,
drag it to the timeline, right-click on it and select maintain
aspect ratio. Instant letterbox.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : I would letterbox the footage. That way you "only" loose the
vertical resolution and not the extra loss Boyd talks about.

In premiere just start a 4:3 project, import the 16:9 footage,
drag it to the timeline, right-click on it and select maintain
aspect ratio. Instant letterbox. -->>>

This is what I meant. You're maintaining a 16:9 image within a 4:3 comp.

Although now I'm just going to start experimenting with a lot of different ways as talked about in this thread. Thanks for the input.