Canon HD 1920 vs 1440 What the.....?

D

DanielKoons

New member
I am wanting to get into HD Video, and I have done my research and there is one thing that flat out does not make sense. What the.....?

The Canon XH A1's sensor is 1440x1080 which appears numerically to be 4:3 yet is actually 16:9 and magically changes to that aspect ratios and turns magically into 1920x1080. What the.....?

Canon's HV30 and HG10's sensor are 1920x1080 but actually record 1440x1080 again turns a sensor that is 16:9 into 4:3 yet stays 16:9. What the.....?

If there interpolation, ok fine but then why do they claim to be 1920x1080? And how can 16x9 become 4:3 and stay 16x9? What the.....?

I am looking also at the HF10 and HF100 which are the only ones make sense but the sensor is smaller than the HV30, so I am really torn and confused. What the.....?
 
HDV is 1440x1080. Period. It's still going to be native 16:9. The pixels it's using are not square, so that's where the 16:9 comes from. If they were square pixels, then yes it would indeed be 4:3. But, if you have the proper PAR, it will appear correctly. It's a pretty commonly done thing, b/c our eye is less sensitive to the horizontal resolution.

DVCPRO HD is 1280 x 1080.

Of the smaller crop of cameras none do native 1080, except for the new Sony EX1 which will record native 1080 (1920x1080).

But, if you are looking at HDV, the codec is 1440x1080.

Hope that helps.

Later,
jason
 
Jason hit it on the head. Just like DV video is 720 x 480 in both 4:3 and 16:9, except that they have PAR of .9 and 1.2, respectively. The pixels aren't square; it's another form of compression.
 
Actually, I believe "full screen" (not widescreen) NTSC 720x480 video has a DAR of 15:11 and NTSC 704x480 video has a DAR of 4:3 (don't know the PAR off the top of my head). I'd like to confirm that somewhere though.
 
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