ADVC-100 problems
 

I edited a resume together. I want to capture it to vhs tape now. I am sending it into the canapous via firewire, and into the VCR via rca. The picture is widescreen, but the vcr is picking it up as 3x4. I am using Video Vegas 4.0 and the video settings are all at widescreen I believe. Does anyone have a suggestions?

Michael Estepp

Even though I have one of these things, I have to warn you to take my comments with a grain of salt, as I could be very wrong. Fair warning!

Am I to understand that, after going through the converter, the picture shows up on screen as a squashed/stretched anamorphic-looking image?

I'm not familiar with Vegas, but I would tend to think that setting everything to "widescreen" would simply say to the software "this footage is 720x480, but with a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio". The result being that everything looks fine in your editing software, because the footage is being displayed correctly, whereas it's stored as a funky looking anamorphic file. The VCR/TV--not really sure which it is--doesn't care about this, however, and just assumes the pixel aspect ratio is .9, like your average, run of the mill, 4:3 video.

Meaning, essentially, there's nothing wrong with the ADVC.

I imagine the solution has something to do with making your project 4:3 in nature, scaling the footage to the proper dimension, and creating a letterbox, making it 4:3 overall, but widescreen where it counts (the actual source video). That way, once you send it to the VCR, it will be 4:3 all the way. I don't know how to do this with Vegas, however; you might ask over in the Vegas forum, they could probably help out.

If that confused you, well, don't worry, it confused me too. Hopefully someone more experienced in these matters will show up soon. :P

Robert is right. Even a widescreen picture is in reality still a 4x3
720x480 (or 720x576 for PAL) picture. The only difference is that
the pixel aspect ratio (height versus width of a pixel) is different.
If you tell your NLE everything is widescreen it takes this into
consideration when it displays the footage to you. It resizes
the footage basically before showing it to you.

The ADVC can't do this. It just converts a digital signal to analog
and that's all that it does (basically). If you where to hook up
a widescreen TV (and set it to 16:9) it will look alright.

As Robert points out you must letterbox your own footage. This
is very easy in Vegas. Make a new project and set it to normal
4:3 DV. Then load up your 16:9 footage and make sure it is set
to 16:9 (right-click on the footage and then properties). Vegas
should then automatically letterbox your footage.

I found a solution using video vegas... I set everything for widescreen, and then when I rendered, I rendered it out as 4x3... this sent it out to the ADVC as 4x3 with the widescreen bars... yea baby!

It feels good when you realize it was a simple mistake and not an equipment glitch, doesn't it!

Machael: that's basically the same thing we suggested only in
reverse. There is more than one solution to that issue <g>