I've got the Century anamorphic adapter but I really don't like using it. You can't zoom all the way out, you can only zoom about a third of the way in, focus is hard to see, auto-focus not that reliable either, and without being able to go really wide, camera shake becomes a real issue.

I can see using it for a feature film type production where you are using tripods and taking time to set everything up, but for the documentary type run and gun stuff I do, it's a real pain.

With the Vegas 16:9, it's pretty close to being as sharp as 4:3, and it formats into 16:9 nicely. It is a couple of extra steps however, and I wonder how much I'm actually gaining over just shooting with the 16:9 setting.

I do not have any Sony camera so this is not directed at that part of the question. I do have a widescreen camera, a widescreen set and another camera with the "squeeze" mode. I also know I answered most of this question in another, almost identical post you made. Not sure why you re framed the question and posted it again.

"true" widescreen shots look best. The field of view is wider and the resolution is full. Squeeze mode or cropping/blowing up in post does not match this method.

"Squeeze" mode is hit and miss. I never use it because I don't like it. It is sort of the same concept as "digital" image stabization vs "optical" image stablization. With DIS the camera is blowing up the image on all sides and than moves it around to "stablize". Now if you combine this with the squeeze mode, which also blows up the image, you would have more loss of resolution... and you are stuck with it because this is what is coming out of the camera. Even if you don't use DIS just using squeeze cuts down on image quality because it is cropping top and bottom and blowing up the remaning image. And you can't go back once it is on tape.

Cropping it in post I have done and if you can not shoot true widescreen to me this works better than doing it in camera. I have done tests and viewed the results on a widescreen/big screen set and the material that was done in post with Vegas, with supersample on, looked better than squeeze mode direct out of camera. Comparing the direct 4:3 output to the 16:9 crop there is a loss of resolution but supersample helps and if you need the image to be in that aspect ratio than doing it in post offers a lot more options.

I shoot with my Sony vx2000 in 16:9 all the time, and show the final from DVD to my Sony 50" HD TV, it looks great. But like all non Hi-def shots, stay close to your subject, don't expect too much detail in far/wide shots of peoples faces.

I can't understand how supersampling would help in this instance. I thought supersampling only was useful in creating motion blur in generated media.

I believe that the electronic stabilation on some of the megapixel plus video cameras start with an image that is bigger than 720 by 480 NTSC so that they can deshake without losing resolution. Wide mode with electronic stabilization on my TRV20 looks great, and I don't believe I am losing any resolution in this mode. I think it is just allocating those million pixels differently.

From my own experiments, interpolation (either in Vegas or in camera) works quite well on closeups. The interpolated portions of big lines look smooth and it's hard to tell it wasn't just a higher resolution shot. On wider shots interpolation looks pretty bad however. Faces lose detail and small details like leaves on trees just become a mess. Because of this, I'm tempted to keep and use my VX2000 for interior low light shots were it really shines even after I buy (someday) a high end true widescreen camera.

I have an older Sony TRV20 as well as my VX2000. The TR20 uses a sing 1/4" megapixel CCD and uses these extra pixels to capture a true 16:9 image when in 16:9 mode. If I'm shooting indoors, there is no comparison: the VX-2000 looks bright and colorful and high resolution, even in 16:9 mode, where the interpolated details are mostly just following the curve of a face or walls or furnature and look great. Outdoors in 16:9 mode however it is a different story. The TRV 20 in 16:9 mode just looks so much crisper and more detailed. Lack of color detail from a single CCD is nothing compared to losing 60 lines of real resolution.

One last thing to confirm: it is my understanding that stretch mode anamorphic 16:9 is every bit as crisp as letterboxed 16:9. You just lose the extra resolution that you would gain if you shot with native 16:9 CCDs. In other words, stretch mode 16:9 is no worse than letterboxed 4:3 sharpness wise. It just has the added advantage of formatting correctly on a widescreen TV. Is this correct?

>>>I can't understand how supersampling would help in this instance. I thought supersampling only was useful in creating motion blur in generated media.<<<

Supersample and motion blur are not the same. Using Supersample on normal footage isn't going to do too much but remember in the scenerio I mention you are actually blowing up an image.

Not to dig up the past again but there was an entire discussion, not all of it good, with Spot in this forum about supersample. But here is how he described it at the time - talking about a supersample with a setting of 4 -

This means that for every one frame in the original media, Vegas will render 4 frames of information. This is mostly useful when working with still images and generated media. The way this works is that Vegas creates interpretive frames based on the difference between the project framerate and the framerate of the media, or the computer-generated imagery. This also creates smoother flow and edges for generated behaviors such as Pan/Crop, Track Motion, transitions, and other 'new' media created in the timeline during the editing stages.

In my case I took 4:3 footage, used pan/crop to resize for 16:9 and rendered out trying different settings. Supersample for sure made a difference.

As for your Sony cameras - again, don't have so can't comment one way or the other. Adam Wilt however has some stuff about this whole issue -

The "wrong way" is wrong because the resultant image only uses 360 lines (525/59.94) or 432 lines (625/50) of the CCD instead of the entire 480 or 576. When this is displayed anamorphically on your monitor, the camera has digitally rescaled the lines to fit the entire raster, but 1/4 of the vertical resolution has been irretrievably lost, and the in-camera algorithms used to stretch the image often create ugly sampling artifacts.

[SNIP]

The bad news is that most inexpensive DV cameras (including the VX2000 and XL-1s) do 16:9 the wrong way.

[SNIP]

I'd rate the quality of 16:9 images as follows:

Link to full article: DV FAQ - etc

Another good piece: Widescreen DV Notes

...when in 16:9 mode, the 16:9 area (~720x360 pixels) of the image is enlarged digitally to 720x480 before being compressed, therefore allowing all of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) compression blocks to be utilized in compressing the image. When the digital 16:9 is turned off, the 16:9 area only occupies 75% of the total image, which means there aren't as many DCT blocks working on that area, thereby lowering the image quality


NOTE - all of what I am saying is based on mini-dv based footage. Clearly shooting HD footage and "cropping", it would be at a higher res. Also normally the spec for HD/HDV is 16:9 aspect anyway so in a way the discussion is null. My thought a year or more ago was that if a person had the option to shoot 4:3 or 16:9 they should shoot 16:9 because the future is not 4:3. Likewise I like to use a common director comment to the camera op from most all film sets I have ever been on - "Shoot for TV, frame for film". In other words shoot for 16:9 but be mindful of what you see, or don't, in the 4:3 frame.

EDIT - updated spelling

Well this question has been bugging me quite a bit lately as I am getting ready to do a project that will likely be 16:9 in it's final form with my 4:3 VX2000 camera. I finally did a test comparing the two methods of attaining 16:9 (in camera and Vegas generated).

We had an alligator sitting on our half submerged dock and I shot him 16:9 using the in-camera 16:9 and 4:3, started a 16:9 Vegas project, imported both on to the timeline, and rendered the result.

The difference was subtle on low movement and striking on high movement. Either way, the Vegas stretch looked better. On quick camera moves, the in-camera 16:9 looked really blocky and bad: kind of like it does when you do an NTSC/PAL conversion with Vegas 5 or earlier. With the Vegas generated 16:9, the result didn't have the extra clarity of 16:9 native (I shot the same thing with my TRV20 in native 16:9 mode), but it didn't have any less resolution than the 4:3 version either.

Now I know. The Vegas stretch looks better. I would go so far as to say the Vegas stretch is quite useable while the VX-2000 in camera stretch is not.