simple 16x9 question

J

jackal2513

Active member
hi there,

I am in the throws of buying a camera to make a short film that will be widescreen. It will only ever be output on a DVD so I am wondering if I will achieve better quality shooting at real widescreen resolution on say a Canon XL2 then resizing to 4:3 full height anamorphic for output to dvd or will the 100A in its widescreen mode suffice ? I would like to go with the panasonic in a way because i gather its good for a filmic look and also it will be cheaper.

How does it do widescreen ? Does it use the full area of the CCD to make a full height 4:3 anamorphic picture (horizontally squeezed) or does it use a lttervoxed portion of the ccd (a reduced resolution therefore) and then stretch that upwards ?


regards

Richard
 
very close to letterboxed area used and then stretched.. it should be called "strech" mode instead of "squeeze" but for small format stuff like DVD.. it looks great. i wouldnt worry about the resolution so much for TV. it would be fine. id choose the camera based on other things first if theres any other concerns you had.
 
Here are some examples of a film that I am working on. Most things were shot 4x3 and cropped and resized in post, but some of them were squeezed. You end up with about the same resolution.
http://www.stefweb.net/
All of these stills have actually been slightly softened, and shot with almost no sharpening in camera.
 
jackal2513 said:
It will only ever be output on a DVD so I am wondering if I will achieve better quality shooting at real widescreen resolution on say a Canon XL2 then resizing to 4:3 full height anamorphic for output to dvd
Click to expand...
If you're shooting on an XL2, you don't resize anything. The footage that comes off the tape is anamorphic 16:9, exactly what you want for authoring your DVD.

Then again, so is the footage that comes out of a 100A in squeeze mode.

The XL2 footage will be higher resolution, but the 100A squeeze mode footage will be the highest resolution a TV can safely display without flickering. If you're shooting for regular television output, the 100A is adequate for that, but if for example you were shooting for playback in computers, the XL2 will have a noticeable resolution advantage in 16:9 mode. Even on a regular television the XL2's 16x9 mode will be higher-res, but it may introduce interline flicker.

It's only really an issue for 16x9 CRT televisions. There won't be any flicker on plasmas or LCDs, and if it's a 4x3 TV, the DVD player is going to letterbox/resize the footage anyway, and that should eliminate any flicker concern.

How does it do widescreen ? Does it use the full area of the CCD to make a full height 4:3 anamorphic picture (horizontally squeezed) or does it use a lttervoxed portion of the ccd (a reduced resolution therefore) and then stretch that upwards ?
Click to expand...
The DVX uses the letterbox area of the CCD and stretches that upwards. The XL2 uses the same physical area of the CCD, but it has more pixels crammed into that area, so it gets higher native resolution. The DVX makes its 16x9 from a 720x360 pixel grid, the XL2 makes its from a 960x480 grid.
 
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