Is 4:3 still good for most festivals these days?

F

Fender126

Member
Hello:
Im a recent DVX100a purchaser. I am planning to do some film and documentary projects that I would like to release to at least some major film festivals. Alot of the sites I visit are unclear or dont mention about whether or not they prefer/need our films to be in widescreen or not. Seeing as DVX100a only shoots in 4:3 (I refuse to use the stretch option), what do you all suggest?

Shoot them all in 4:3?

Buy a good widescreen lens? if so, which ones are good?

Film to crop later (film the image for a widescreen crop in the editing room)?

What do you think is the best option?

Glad to be a part of this community. I look forward to hearing from some people.

from Kevin
 
Why would you "refuse to use" squeeze mode? Sorry; that's frankly kind of silly, especially if you're considering using a lens adapter (squeeze is only slightly less sharp and you don't have to redefine the pixel aspect ratio in post), or cropping in post (squeeze will give you better results).

If you want widescreen, shoot squeeze.
 
The reason I refused was because I read that it stretches the image (making, say, a persons head wider) to make it widescreen. sounds like I misunderstood what squeeze mode is.
 
Actually, it stretches vertically, not horizontally. It'll look like that if you view it as if it were 4:3, just like the image on a widescreen DVD would, but you'll never do that. It's a proper widescreen image.
 
Stretch is actually electronically cropping the image to 16:9 in camera because the DVX has 4x3 native chips. A newer camera with 16x9 native chips just records the whole image from the chip.

If you want 16x9 from your DVX, go with squeeze for the least headaches and wonderful footage.
 
thank you william. does the crop show in the camera display or will I have to figure out where it crops when setting up shots?
 
'Squeeze' mode on the DVX, I understand, refers to the way the image is stored on the tape. If you use the letterbox mode, perfectly good areas of the recorded image are wasted by recording black bars. The 'squeeze' mode takes advantage of the full recording area by stretching the image to cover the entire DV frame. These non square pixels are automatically stretched back to their proper ratio whenever you view your footage in your editing program. What you see on the LCD monitor is also corrected.
 
No, squeeze (on the DVX) uses a 16:9 area of a 4:3 chip, discarding the top and bottom of the chip (so it simply ignores the same areas as would be black in letterbox mode). It's not very different from taking a 4:3 image in post, cropping it, and stretching it to widescreen -- EXCEPT that it's done in-camera before processing and compression, so it's going to be of better quality than a post crop/stretch.
 
AndrewGentle said:
'Squeeze' mode on the DVX, I understand, refers to the way the image is stored on the tape. If you use the letterbox mode, perfectly good areas of the recorded image are wasted by recording black bars. The 'squeeze' mode takes advantage of the full recording area by stretching the image to cover the entire DV frame. These non square pixels are automatically stretched back to their proper ratio whenever you view your footage in your editing program. What you see on the LCD monitor is also corrected.
Click to expand...

Kinda.

On the 100B the LCD can be toggled in squeeze mode to show the correct aspect ratio on the LCD. The original cannot do this so the image on the LCD is vertically stretched out, but the whole frame is shown and in post your NLE will automatically correct it and it will look like beautiful wide screen footage.

Letterbox mode lets you wind up with 4x3 footage that has been masked in-camera to appear wide screen. It is not "anamorphic" because the pixel aspect ratio does not change from the .9 that 4x3 uses. In squeeze mode, the camera crops the image as well, but the footage is recorded as "anamorphic" in that the pixel aspect ratio actually changes. This is the best option if you want to make a wide screen DVD.

Both give comparable results (as in, you wouldn't see a difference in image quality) but they require different ways of working in post, especially output for your delivery be it web, broadcast or DVD.

If your story is best told with a 4x3 canvas then use it. I have never heard of a festival rejecting a film because of its aspect ratio.

Edit: Well David beat me to it :).
 
Congrats on the purchase- and welcome to the forum-great place here--wealth of knowledge!! Utilize it

David Jimerson said:
so it's going to be of better quality than a post crop/stretch.
Click to expand...

How is this true? Why wouldn't you shoot a full 4:3 and edit native--then nest into a sequence with custom dimensions? I believe 720x405(or so) is 16:9. This gives you more vertical headroom to play with in post--NO RESOLUTION LOSS- as opposed to 'stretching' pixels- You just have to frame your shots with this in mind when shooting.

BUT- seeing as Fender126 is new to this it would probably be just fine to shoot/edit squeeze. Not a huge image hit- but there is one there for sure.

Good luck and welcome to the world of DVXuser Fender126:2vrolijk_08:

Z
 
aligment 1: someday (soon I hope) I will understand more of what your talking about. Thanks for the welcome.

the story is definately better told widescreen, so if I can pull it off (despite my early impression), thats great.

william: making it 'anamorphic' sounds like the best option, especially if there is not much image quality loss. Personally I dont care too much. I do want the colors to be vibrant and I would rather it have a wide scope in terms of visuals. My main concern is the standards of film festivals. And how it looks on a big screen. I read that there may be a difference then on your computer screen or lcd. But I left my filmmakers handbook in a friends car..so Ill have to re read that now that I have a camera...cant wait for that.

anyway...im rambling from exitement...thanks guys. that was very helpfull. a good start.

from Fender
 
alignment1 said:
How is this true?
Click to expand...

It's true because the CCDs deliver an image much larger than 720x480, and with much more color information, and the crop stretch is made out of THAT -- and THEN it's compressed 5:1 with 4:1:1 color sampling, and reduced to a 720x480 image.

If you do it in post, you're taking the 720x480 image, already compressed 5:1 (as in, 5x less information than what the camera worked with), already with low-resolution 4:1:1 color, and then trying to stretch it.

Are you going to get a better photo enlargement from a large negative or a shrunken negative? Same kind of thing in play.


Why wouldn't you shoot a full 4:3 and edit native--then nest into a sequence with custom dimensions? I believe 720x405(or so) is 16:9. This gives you more vertical headroom to play with in post--NO RESOLUTION LOSS- as opposed to 'stretching' pixels- You just have to frame your shots with this in mind when shooting.
Click to expand...
NTSC widescreen is NOT 720x405. It's 720x480. If you take a 720x480 4:3 image and crop it down, in order to go to NTSC standards -- including for DVD, which you would of course want to do -- you have uprez the image. You have to take what you cropped down to 360 vertical lines and make 480 out of them. Obviously, this will mean you will not be able to achieve the same resolution as native widescreen.

No, squeeze won't give you exactly the same resolution as native 16:9 either, because because, as I said above, the crop is done pre-processing and pre-compression, it retains more spatial resolution, and better color fidelity.
 
Fender126 said:
william: making it 'anamorphic' sounds like the best option, especially if there is not much image quality loss. Personally I dont care too much.
Click to expand...

Squeeze is already anamorphic. It's done exactly the same way as a widescreen DVD. If you were to play it straight from the tape to a widescreen TV, it would show properly.
 
really? hmm..doesnt sound so bad at all. So..what would a user of a camea with native wide screen setting tell me if I asked him what makes his cameras wide screen better? better resolution in the final image, basically? or is there anything more to that. And if its just slight quality loss, done right..then I might be ok eh? (yes, Im Canadian)..
 
A camera with native 16:9 chips will, all other things being equal, deliver a slightly sharper image than the DVX's squeeze mode.

(I say "the DVX's squeeze mode" because SD widescreen is still called "squeeze" in the Panasonic P2 HD cameras, too, even though THEY are native 16:9 cameras and thus deliver a sharper image.)
 
I am nitpicky..how bad is slightly? would it be...
- somthing an average viewer would notice?
- somthing only other cameramen/filmmakers would notice?
- somewhat subconciously uncomfortable to an average viewer even though they may not know why?
- a substantial loss in the vibrancy of color?
 
You'd probably need charts to tell the difference unless you're REALLY experienced. Casual audiences will never tell.

Color rendition would be the same. Better, as I explained above, than cropping 4:3 and uprezzing it.
 
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