The edge crop downconversion only takes off the sides. The full height (resolution) is utilized.

Nice Greg. Is this done in-camera or software?

When I have done it for the ad agency, I have just done it in camera to Beta SP. I haven't tried it from my edit system (PP CS3) but I am sure it would be possible and actually might be cleaner. But my client is happy with what I am giving him already. And it is much less time consuming.

I guess what's totally confusing me Greg is the following: If you are recording in 16:9, that means by definition (no pun intended), that on a 4:3 screen the top & bottom would be letterboxed...it has to be or it wouldn't be native 16:9. It can only be full height on a 16:9 screen.

So I'm trying to understand how a downcoversion process can lop off the sides of this 16:9 picture and still leave full height on a 4:3 screen without zooming the picture???? There should still be top & bottom bars on the downcoverted picture if no zooming is taking place.

There must be something I'm not understanding here.

Only if you want to see the whole thing, undistorted. There are actually three ways to display 16:9 material on a 4:3 screen: Letterboxed, squeezed and edge crop. Edge crop just lops of the right and left sides and leaves you with 12:9 (or 4:3) rather than 16:9. Top to bottom is unchanged.

Go into the kitchen and get some sugar cubes and make a rectangle 16 cubes wide by 9 cubes tall. Now take away two columns on each side, to get 12:9. That's edge crop.

You can easily do this in post or in the cam, if it's the Z5. The FX1000 doesn't do this.

You've just clarified it for me Adam! I was looking at the FX1000 manual and saw no way to do this. The downconvert function in the 1000 looked like it would leave you with top & bottom bars. The 'squeeze' method is used for anamorphic DVDs and such, so that method wouldn't be practical if you had no means to 'unsqueeze/stretch' at the display end.

I think most NLEs will unsqueeze easily. Certainly Premiere does. I found this out when I had my one really unhappy experience with 16:9 on the VX2000 -- it came in "squeezed" (actually stretched vertically, but it looks the same) -- and Premiere automatically restored it to its proper ratio.

Yeah, it just makes the editing process a bit more tedious. I use Edius Pro and never had a need for this. I'm pretty sure it can do it, but it would be interesting to see if the software does as good a job as the in-camera conversion.

Of course it would be easier if the camera just did as good a job shooting native 4:3 SD as it apparently does in shooting downconverted HDV.

Does anyone have a link to the Z5 manual? I've only found the product brochure on the HDV microsite.

SD on FX1000 - Jury is out
 

Of course it would be easier if the camera just did as good a job shooting native 4:3 SD as it apparently does in shooting downconverted HDV.[/QUOTE]



Hey Ken are you suggesting the FX1000 is not recording SD as good at what say the VX2000 or other cameras.

I am asking this as my eyes are telling me that SD on the FX1000 is a bit fuzzy and not as sharp as my other SD cams. I mentioned this last week and are very concerned about it as most of what I do is still SD. Inknow one can downconvert but to be honest for dance concerts and the like where I need to record contunuasly for over 80 minutes SD in Long play suits me.

Anyone else out there done a test to see how SD is looking?

Why don't you shoot your SD with an SD cam and just use the new cam for 16:9 stuff? I personally can't imagine the new Sony's would beat out the older cams for 4:3 shooting.

FX and SD filming
 

Jeff, I want to shoot SD and 16:9. 4:3 is dead here in Australia! Surely no-one shoots 4:3 unless the client needs it that way?

Re quality I was always pretty happy with the picture quality of my Pana DVC-62 only it was 4:3.

I am still to edit and really look at a dance concert filmed 2 weeks ago from the FX but initial thoughts are that the DVC62 looks more sharp and better in low light but that was the be expected.

I am taking on board what everyone has said about HD looking zillions x's better but the fact is SD is what I need as DVD is what I output.

I really don't want to have to shoot HD as all my older playback cameras only playback SD. Also a lot of what I do gets transferred to DVD recorders in real time.

I am going to ask my wedding friend who has borrowed my FX to do some FX v VX2000 side by side comparisons and will report back.

Martin, you and I are in the same boat. The vast majority of my work is SD for corporate videos. But the reason I said what I did was really based on what you and Jeff said. It seems the concensus (and I don't have the cam yet) is that you get a better SD picture by downconverting HD to SD as opposed to shooting originally in SD.

Frankly, if true, this is a bit disappointing since the FX1000 doesn't do the type of downconvert I'd want (no letterboxing). Thanks to Adam, I see exactly what he was talking about, an option for a perfect 4:3 downcovert with no letterboxing with the Z5.

To be honest, I must be thick about this, but I'm having so much trouble getting my brain around how the Z5 can do this without enlarging the center area of the original frame. Sony's verbaige says "outputs the central portion of the original image by cropping its right and left sides"

I still don't see how this can be done without enlarging that same central portion. If you think of the original 16:9 frame fitted to a 4:3 screen, how can you fill the screen by lopping off the left & right panels without also enlarging that central portion. How else can you avoid top & bottom panels? I must have a mental block on this!

Ken, the central portion is not enlarged but actually reduced in size during conversion. The original HD image has 1080 horizontal lines. The right and left sides are chopped during the conversion process so that the central portion now has 4:3 ratio. And finally, the central portion is reduced in size (resolution) to an SD image of 480 lines of horizontal resolution.

P.