HDV and Widescreen together - How?

R. Ian Davis wrote on 2/7/2006, 10:18 PM

I'm a newbie to DV, including my camera (HC1) and editing (Vegas +DVD). Looking through all the help features, I can't see how to create a project with both HDV and Widescreen. If 16:9 widescreen is a 1.77 aspect ratio, and 1440:1080 is a 1.33 aspect ratio, how do I get from an HDV source video to a widescreen result without stretching or cropping the video?

I've tried setting the video properties to HDV 1080, but I don't seem to get a full widescreen image. On the other hand, I can easily get a widescreen image if I decrease the image quality to 720x480, but, being a PIA, I want both? What can be done? AAACK !

Thanks in advance,

Ian

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 2/7/2006, 10:28 PM

HDV's Pixel aspect ratio is 1.333.
If you use the HDV template (1440 x 1080) and right click the Preview window to view at device aspect, you should be seeing widescreen. HD is all widescreen.
I think you're mixing PAR (Pixel aspect ratio) with SAR (Screen Aspect Ratio?

R. Ian Davis wrote on 2/8/2006, 5:22 AM

Thanks for the reply.

What you suggested worked wonders for the preview screen... it's now visible in what I'd call a normal widescreen format. But the rendered file is not... I've rendered it using HDV 60i to an AVI file and using 1440:1080 to a MOV file.

In both cases, when the finished file was viewed using Windows Media Player and QuickTime, respectively, the image was stretched back to what looked like a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The Vegas 6 Glossary says this under the Pixel Aspect entry:

The pixel aspect determines whether the pixels are square (1.0) which refers to computers, or rectangular (settings other than 1.000) which typically refers to televisions. The pixel aspect ratio, together with the frame size, determine the frame aspect ratio.

Does it make sense that, because I'm viewing the end product on a computer which has square pixels, I'm not going to see widescreen, and that I have to send it to a television?

Thanks for your patience...

Ian

When I review the properties of the file in Media Player, it says that the video size is 1440 x 1080 (good), and the aspect ratio is 4:3 (bad).

kkolbo wrote on 2/8/2006, 5:51 AM

... I've rendered it using HDV 60i to an AVI file and using 1440:1080 to a MOV file.

When you render to another format, such as Windows Media you must take into account the format's PAR. In the case of Windows Media, when you render, if you are going to render 1440x1080 then you set the PAR in the settings to 1.33. If you use square pixels then you render as 1920x1080.

This is the same with QT. Both formats have templates for HD which have the correct PAR for the resolution.

R. Ian Davis wrote on 2/8/2006, 11:33 AM

That's got it! ... at least for the Windows Media Player... I can't find the control on QuickTime to change the aspect ratio to 0.75... but that's okay... I use Media Player most of the time.

Thanks for your help!

Ian