Squeeze or 16:9

T

tcm

New member
Hey Everybody,
I am about to shoot (DVX100B) a documentary and have seen on Vimeo and other places that if you shoot in squeeze mode you can uprez to HD quality footage. I use FCP 5.0 and want to know what is the work flow as far as capturing squeeze footage, and exporting it for use on the web, dvd, and festival circuit (digital projector), I know those are different formats, but any info or previous threads that you could send my way would be greatly appreciated. I want the best looking picture (I assume thats hd size) and that 24p film look that I love the DVX100B for. Is squeeze the way to go? thanks for the help!
 
squeeze is 16:9

theres 2 widescreen modes on the DVX

first theres letterbox, which just puts the widescreen image into a 4:3 frame and has black bars on the top and bottom.

Then, you have squeeze mode, which takes the same widescreen image and stretches it vertically to fill the whole frame so that it keeps more detail in the picture after importing to the computer. Your editing app should then be set to stretch it out horizontally so then you have a 16:9 image with more detail than if you cropped a 4:3 image.
 
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Have you read Barry's book?
if not, you might want to consider getting one.

I read it in his book but it all depends on what you are going to project it.
if you are planing to project it on TV or projector (4:3) then you should shoot letterbox.
if it's for the web (mostly 16:9 now) then you should shoot squeez.
 
If you want 16:9, you really should always shoot squeeze. The only reason I can think of to shoot letterbox when you have the squeeze option is if you want 16:9 framing and the video is intended to be viewed in a 4:3 stream with no editing or processing (maybe straight from the tape).

Barry recommended shooting letterbox over 4:3 if you want 16:9 with the original DVX which had no squeeze mode.

(However, there's no HD with the DVX.)
 
im confused too. i shoot letterbox, but if i shoot squeze how do i get the image back to 16:9 after uploading?
 
Uploading to what? If you're capturing to an NLE, the NLE shouldn't have any problem detecting and displaying the squeeze footage properly.

The image IS 16:9; letterbox actually isn't. Letterbox is actually 4:3 with 1/4 of the pixels made into black.
 
OK, you mean capturing? :)

"Uploading" is something you do from your computer to another system, like a website or a WAN server. "Capturing" is transferring the video on your tape to the computer.

When you capture the squeeze footage, FCP shouldn't have any problem recognizing it as widescreen.
 
haha my bad. yeah capturing.
will it show up as squeeze in the viewer and on the footage? or will it automatically convert it to 16:9 (with black bars on top and bottom). And if it won't automatically do it, how do i to match it to letterbox footage as well
 
It should display it correctly automatically.

To match it with letterbox footage, you'd either edit both in a 4:3 project (though you may need to resize the squeeze footage), or you'd crop the letterbox stuff and use both in a widescreen project.
 
Hey peeps, forgive my nobness and jumping in on the conversation. I'm considering getting a 100b for a few reasons.

If I'm understanding the conversation correctly you are saying that you can shoot squeeze and than FCP can un squeeze and get true 16:9?
 
SQUEEZE is a terrible name. It was only called SQUEEZE because it looked squeezed on the LCD display when the feature was released on the A model.

It's pure anamorphic 16:9 footage like any other camera. FCP doesn't need to "unsqueeze" it. It's not some unique kind of footage.
 
I've shot a lot of stuff on the DVX and would definitely recommend Squeeze for almost any situation, and never really use the Widescreen mode. You get more resolution with Squeeze during editing, the full 720x480 image size is used, it's just the pixels are wider (fatter) so when properly viewed, the image will be in a widescreen format. Shooting widescreen mode you get less resolution as the image is just cropped in the camera to 720x360.

-JJ
http://www.LowBudgetComedy.com
 
Well...even in squeeze mode the image is being cropped, but after it is being streched vertically to fit the frame so you have again your 720x480 image size, but with a different pixel aspect ratio...so the resolution loss is actually the same...

The big difference is that anamorphic footage "squeeze" is much more usable than letterboxed...

However I wouldnt recomend squeeze if somebody wants to shoot interlaced...
 
I dont think I have the knowledge to explain exactly why interlaced/squeeze looks so bad, but I m very sure its something about the combination of streching (that is happening in squeeze mode) with the interlace lines.
 
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