Widescreen vs normal

P

phorus

Member
Hey,

Ive kept DVX in closet for some time and i got back filming with it again. Now things have changed and widescreen seems to be necessary in many places. I assume I could just crop standard 4:3 and convert widescreen, but i would like to see more clearly when filming the area which gets into shot. So i guess my only option is to shoot with widescreen mode with DVX?

Now, ive heard that using widescreen mode in DVX takes the quality off and/or is not as good as 4:3?
Could somebody explain me how much "worse" it makes the quality? Is the only difference in picture size (the blackboxes makes the picture less visible), or are there other negative effects, such as less sharp image or stretched, more visible square pixels or others ?

Thank you very much!
 
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If you have a DVX100A or 100B, then you want to shoot in Squeeze, and you want the Vert. Det. Freq. to be set to THIN.

If you have an original DVX100, then shoot 4:3 and crop -- Vert. Det. Freq. also set to THIN (especially important in this case). You can use the Letterbox mode to show you what widescreen is on your LCD and then tape it off. Then, when you shoot in 4:3, you will have a guide. Shooting and recording in Letterbox is pretty much a waste of pixels, IMO.
 
Apparently, the squeeze is applied before the in camera compression (approx 5:1 for DV) and it does look better than shooting full frame 4:3 and cropping to 16x9 in post. I only shoot squeeze now with my DVX100A unless I specifically want a 4:3 picture size. Up-rezzing to 1280x720 for Youtube looks better this way as well.
Ken
 
Thank you kplo!
If i understood right, using squeeze mode dont affect the 'middle of frame' (the whole picture that is between blackboxes) and only effect is smaller picture size, or does the squeezing stretch pixels wider or something
 
I think it was David Jimerson or John Meyer who explained to me that squeeze does essentially the same thing as cropping in post and using a DV Widescreen project timeline (Sony Vegas language), but does it before the in camera compression.
So: fewer artifacts. I actually did a test a while back comparing the two...same scene split screened side by side and burned to a regular DVD. Played back from a regular DVD player (not the upscaling ones) on a properly set up 40" HDTV, the squeeze mode looked better. My 100A doesn't display the unsqueezed picture in the camera viewfinder or LCD screen, the 100B does.
Hope this helps.
Ken
 
Thank you again kplo, it helped to clarify which one to choose

Maybe i set my question wrong in the other post, but what i was after was the difference in image quality between 4:3 and squeeze.
I would definently like to shoot widescreen, but using 4:3 is no problem too, because the footage will be viewed with computers mostly. So if the loss is visible between 4:3 and squeeze, i would like to stick with 4:3 to get best image, even tho its not maybe best option in current times :)
 
There is a noticeable difference, albeit incredibly minute. My advice would be to just shoot squeeze anyway. I find 4x3 feels worse to many people than an ever so slight drop in detail.
 
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