Anamorphic Question

safarijoe

Well-known member
I just recently started using my anamorphic lens to shot some practice footage. I bought it back when I had visions of being the next Spike Lee but found myself instead doing weddings & events where there was no need for it. I've decided recently to try to get back to why I bought a DVX in the first place, to make a movie.
ANYWAY my problem is this, when I look at my footage on DVD, it is noticibly distorted especially around the edges. The clips are beautiful but there is this barrel like distortion. I'm using VEGAS 6 and DVD 3.0, rendering in VEGAS to MP2. I'm shooting 24pa and I render using MP2, widescreen, 24p,stretched. In DVD 3 I use widescreen to burn the DVD. In the DVX100a, I'm using my normal 24pa settings.
I've done a search on anamorphic lens but haven't found anything dealing with this specific issue. Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.
 
I just recently started using my anamorphic lens to shot some practice footage. I bought it back when I had visions of being the next Spike Lee but found myself instead doing weddings & events where there was no need for it. I've decided recently to try to get back to why I bought a DVX in the first place, to make a movie.
ANYWAY my problem is this, when I look at my footage on DVD, it is noticibly distorted especially around the edges. The clips are beautiful but there is this barrel like distortion. I'm using VEGAS 6 and DVD 3.0, rendering in VEGAS to MP2. I'm shooting 24pa and I render using MP2, widescreen, 24p,stretched. In DVD 3 I use widescreen to burn the DVD. In the DVX100a, I'm using my normal 24pa settings.
I've done a search on anamorphic lens but haven't found anything dealing with this specific issue. Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Just for clarity, is the issue the barrel distortion? Which anamorphic adapter? Also - be adviced that the DVX has some barrel distortion at the wide end. An anamorphic adapter might make it more noticible.

So the question is "how do I fix barrel distortion in post?"
Good question. I'd like to know too. The tough thing is that the distortion goes away as you zoom in just a bit.
 
That's pretty much it. I really don't see the distortion until I render to DVD and I was wondering if I was doing something wrong. Of course I knew that with an anamorphic lenses you could expect some distortion but I thought that it was addressed in post. Instead it seems to be making it worse. As far as the DVX100a having some barrel distortion at the wide end, it must not be that bad as I've been shooting with mine for 4 years and I haven't noticed any significant problems.
 
Could you please post two images? One from inside Vegas, rendering the frame on its preview window, and the other one the same frame playing from the DVD disk (or, the DVD mpeg2 file).
 
As far as the DVX100a having some barrel distortion at the wide end, it must not be that bad as I've been shooting with mine for 4 years and I haven't noticed any significant problems.

The distortion is so minor that it's not noticeable unless you frame a brick wall (or something else with parallel lines) head-on at the widest angle. Certainly nothing to worry about.

Sounds like your TV set (or CRT monitor) may have some barrel. TV's can be adjusted if you know the code to enter service mode (be extremely careful in that menu).
 
Thanks for the help. I went back and reviewed my clips and I found they are distorted on the clips from the DVX. I had hoped that VEGAS would correct the distortion but it didn't. It stretched the picture but the edges are still curved. Here is a link to a sample where the distortion is clearly visible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah-SK9KDUk8

This is pretty much what it looks like on the dvd. What am I doing wrong?
 
I posted another sample of the same clip rendered out to mpeg2 24p widescreen. It occured to me that the raw avi was still compressed. As you can see the mpeg2 is still distorted although I selected stretched.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=collagevmp

I don't have the adapter, so I'm working with that handicap. But, i've used stretch mode on the DVX. The image is stretched vertically as recorded on tape. Then when you bring it into vegas as a Widescreen project, it stretches it horizontally to make it look right. THen you simply tell DVDA that it's a Widescreen DVD when you burn it.

Should be the same with the adapter, but you want to make sure the DVX is set to normal 4:3 mode and let the adapter do it's thing.

If you have the DVX100B, you can set it's LCD display to unsqueeze the video for easier framing.

If you want to email me a 2 or 3 second clip of footage with the adapter I can probably figure it out.

celltech161@yahoo.com
 
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