HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset??

M

matthewd5

Veteran
ok, i'm starting to lose my mind...

i have a ton of footage shot on my dvx-100a with the in camera ASPECT CONV setting of LETTER BOX, not NORM or SQUEEZE

my problem is that the capture cards i have tried think that it is 16:9 and they import it as 720x480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2

is this right?

when i did an import before using just premiere and an on motherboard 1394 port it thought that 4:3 720x480 pixel ratio of .9 was just fine.

it would make my entire week if i could get a definitive answer on this, i have read every message with "LETTERBOX" in it and i still don't know the answer.

matthew
 
Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

It is supposed to be 720 x 480, with a pixel aspect ratio of .9. It should be treated as regular 4:3 footage.
 
Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

thats what i keep telling myself but it just isn't working that way.

tech support at matrox had me totally reinstall xp pro because they said that there was probably leftovers from having the canopus stuff on that machine but that didn't help.

i shot a few minutes of footage in NORM and it came through fine as .9

with my old motherboard the onboard 1394 would capture it just fine using premiere's batch capture but with the new machine it doesn't have onboard 1394 and the premiere capture doesn't use the matrox 1394 port unless you use the matrox avi setting and that is when it starts thinking it's 1.2 pixel ratio.

i'm gonna wind up using the old machine (asus p4e) to capture in premiere and then have to move 200+ gig over the lan :(

matthew
 
Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

I'm pretty sure there was a bug in the early version of the DVX that when you shot letterbox, it also set the 16:9 flag in the data stream. I don't know if this was fixed later or not, I think it was because I've shot lots of letterbox footage and it never came in squished.

Is there a way in your editing program to tell it that the media should have a different aspect ratio? It's easy to do in Vegas, so perhaps your editing program can do it as well?

If not, maybe DV Converter can do it for you. (and if it can't, I bet David Mowbray, the creator, would be willing to add the ability to toggle that flag on and off). http://www.baobab.net/softcs.htm#dv
 
Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

thanks for the link to that utility, i'll check it out.

the thing is i have tried three different things...same footage

motherboard 1394 card - capturing with premiere

everything is fine, 720x480 pixel .9

canopus raptor rt2 card - capturing with premiere or canopus util

video comes out as 720x480 pixel 1.2 - tech support has no ideas...blames it on dvx-100 being 24p !

matrox rtx-100 - capturing with matrox capture util

video comes out as 720x480 pixel 1.2 - tech support suggest reinstalling xp pro, did that, didn't help.

i want to give the matrox card a shot but i have got to find a fix for this capture problem.

its driving me nuts that there are other people with the exact same camera and the same capture card having no problems.

there are no settings in the capture utility to screw this up.

matthew
 
Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

Re: HELP! "letterbox" 16:9 or 4:3 preset

if your in premiere 6.5 the pixel aspect ratio setup is in the project settings on the video tab, and if your in ppro, you can ricght click the clip in the project bin, and click on "interpret footage" and you can set the pixel aspect ratio for each clip like that. you could select all the clips, and do them all at once.
 
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