HDV > SD Downconvert and Black Line
 

Anyone else notice a 3 to 6 pixel horizontal line running across the top of the frame after in cam downconverting?

The native HDV looks fine but the SD has the line. Easy fix in FCP but I'd rather not have to mess with it.

no i havent, but i noticed the huge black bars on top and bottom of the image. i was hoping the downconvert would produce an anamorphic style horizontally squashed image (in order to convert from 16:9 to 4:3). is there a setting that will change this?

Well, there's 'Squeze' (Sony's spelling), 'Letter Box' and 'Edge Crop' in the 'DownConvert' section of the P-Menu when you're in 'Play/Edit' mode. Would one of those do it?

hc1
 

tragically i don't have that setting. or at least i can't find it in the menue. might that be a difference between the a1 and the hc1?

is there a way to enable the feature set of an a1 on an hc1? i.e. like a software hack?

This happens with my FX1. When capturing using the in-camera HDV->DV downconvert, a horizontal black line (usually one pixel high but sometimes 3 or 4) appears on the top of all frames of the captured footage. The full sized HDV frame is just fine.

Here are a couple of recent examples:

http://wvlightning.com/stuff/hdvline1.tif
http://wvlightning.com/stuff/hdvline.tif

Also, I see a pulsing vertical 'vibration' in the preview window on the computer during downconverted capturing. This doesn't show up in the captured footage playback though, but I suspect it might be related to whatever the source of this problem is.

i know this wasnt the original issue in the thread, but i finally figured out why my HC1 DV output is letterboxed.

when capturing to DV (using the ilink conversion from HD to DV) the 'TV type' (16:9 or 4:3) affects the type of DV output - in addition to the analogue output. if set to 16:9 then the output is widescreen anamorphic otherwise its letterboxed.

so what on the A1 is sensibly named downconvert is called tv type - or something very simmilar - on the HC1

i just never thought 'TV' could affect 'DV' but then it must go through the same path as analogue.