After Long Absence I need help - please

Maverick wrote on 3/7/2005, 8:38 AM
Hi all

It's good to be back in the swing of things again!

I have just bought a SONY DVD cam here in the UK (DCR HC30E). The camera supports 16:9 Full (True) widescreen mode.

I have captured to PC some footage recorded in this mode and set the project as PAL DV Widescreen (720x576, 25fps).

After a little editing I thought it would be nice to view on my widescreen TV in the living room so I burned to VCD using Tools - Burn to CD - VCD.Format: MainConcept MPEG1. VCD: PAL. REnder Loop Region only and Fst video resizing.

When viewed on the TV quite a lot of the picture was lost inc. some PIP. I notice that part of the PIP was outside the default safe area but wondered whether there is anything else I should do to obtain the fulll recorded picture.

Would it be any different when burned to DVD?

Also, I remeber discussions that using widescreen mode on a MiniDV cam meant that some quality is lost - is this still the case with my cam?

Thanks for any help you might be able to give.

Cheers.

Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 3/7/2005, 9:12 AM

Welcome back!

When say you "bought a SONY DVD cam" do you mean it records to a DVD disc? If that's the case, you would have been far better off not going that route! It's too limiting when it comes time to edit the material.

Not having ever burned a VCD, I wouldn't be of any help. Yes, DVD should be far superior to VCD.

If your camera shoots 16:9 in a "native" mode, then no, you won't loose any picture quality.



Maverick wrote on 3/7/2005, 9:30 AM
Oooops!

Slip of the fingers in my excitemnet as using vegas again ;-)

I meant DV cam!

Not sure what is meant by native mode; I see black bars top and bottom of viewfinder/LCD screen on cam but I do not have to make any adjustments to the captured footage in Vegas to see it widescreen. Does that help?

Thanks for your help.

Yes, I know DVD will be superior I didn't want to waste a disc when CDs are so cheap.

Basically I wanted to know whether what you view from VCD will be the same as what you will view from DVD?
Orcatek wrote on 3/7/2005, 9:53 AM
Waste a disk? Use RW disks and you can record over and over.

From what I know VCD do not really support wide screen. You have to letterbox it black bars) to make it look wide screen.

Are you doing regular VCD or SVCD? VCD are very low resolutioin, SVCD are not bad.



BillyBoy wrote on 3/7/2005, 10:42 AM
You're talking about a SONY DCR-HC30E MiniDV Handycam(R) PAL Digital Camcorder?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00020VXAY/104-0454247-3777541?v=glance&s=photo&vi=reviews

Neither PAL or NTSC supports wide screen as a MPEG-1, so if you're going to end up making a DVD, you're wasting your time "testing" on a CD because of the limitations of that format, the most notiable being poor bitrate support. As has already been suggested, try testing on a reburnable DVD, they now are pretty cheap as well and some claim you can reuse around a 1,000 times. I've use some test discs maybe a hundred times or so, but 1, 000 I think is a bit much.


Maverick wrote on 3/9/2005, 10:31 AM
Sorry for the delay in replying.

yes - that's the camera.

Thanks for the advice about MPEG-1 & VCDs. I now have some DVD-RWs and I can use the first one many times to burn and check everything before burning finally to DVD-R or DVD+R.

Cheers