Question about the LCD display monitor on the Z1 - Underscan Function?
 

I saw a Z1 in action at a wedding a while ago and got talking to the guy behind it who showed me what he called an "underscan" function where the image displayed on the LCD screen was 'larger' than what was actually captured.

A white box outlined the area that was actually captured, and he said this allowed him to see what was just out of frame.

I thought this was extremely cool. So when I talked to a Sony sales guy yesterday about that very function he was unsure what I meant and said he had never heard of it.

Now, I saw the white box on the LCD screen, and the guy told me what I said above. Is that the case? Or is this as new to everyone else as it was to the Sony guy?

Thanks,
-- John.

Actually the white box indicates what Sony considers to be "TV safe." It's very conservative - all my TV's show much more than that. Be careful, because this isn't explained very well in the manual and I shot several tapes with bad framing because of my wrong assumptions. The "Marker Sel" menu function allows you to display this box, a center mark, and 4:3 guidelines. However the LCD screen still overscans. In other words, the camera actually captures a wider view on tape than the viewfinder/LCD show.

There is a separate function called "All Scan" which will show the full frame. It may not be obvious how to activate this however. You have to use the "Assign Btn" item on the "Others" menu. All Scan is an option which can be assigned to one of the programmable buttons.

When you activate All Scan the full frame is letterboxed on the viewfinder. My only objection here is that they put a very wide black border around the image which wastes a lot of pixels on that little LCD. I don't know why they don't scale the image to fill the LCD in All Scan mode. So I find myself constantly toggling it on and off - makes it harder to focus when it's on. But it's nice to have and I don't think any other fixed lens camcorder has this function.

The other caveat is that All Scan only works in HDV mode, not DV. The setting for the markers mentioned above also works in this mode, but as I said, I don't find it terribly useful since most TV's will show an area larger than the white rectangle indicates.

BTW - All Scan mode is only available on the Z1; the FX1 doesn't have it.

That's really good to know, Boyd! I haven't read the manual a whole lot so I assumed All Scan was like Clear Scan. Very good to know!

Thanks Boyd