Okay here's a good one-

Hi everybody-
I just shot something... I used a DVX100 & a VX2000. Both were set to the 16x9 option. Now, capturing with the 'NTSC DV' setup (4x3, with anamorphic 'on'), the aspects are very different. I'm lost. Any tips to make the footage intercuttable?
Luna

Do both cameras shoot anamorphic 16:9 or is one shooting a masked 4:3 aspect? Or do you mean that the letterboxed video in your sequence doesn't match up (the black bars I mean).

Andy

What Andy said. The DVX-100a doesn't have a 16x9 chip in it, but rather letterboxes the footage. It is even referred to as "the letterbox format" in it's literature.

By the look of things the VX2000 also letterboxes.

Looks like they have different ideas about the dimensions of the letterbox.

Next time, shoot 4x3 on both and letterbox in post. For now, you might have to crop off even more of the image from one camera to match what the other camera has.

Good grief -- no true 16:9 mode on the DVX-100a? What were they thinking?
Since about 2001 it's been about as standard a feature on pro DV cameras as, oh, the record button.

It's pretty surprising to me that the two cameras would have different 16:9 crop modes, but not inconceivable. But Luna, here's my question: If you'd captured in 16:9 mode, your footage would be hyper-distorted -- if the cameras only applied a letterbox and didn't shoot 16:9 mode, and you captured in 16:9, your footage should now look vertically stretched in the Viewer. Does it?

Is this a bad time to point out how bad an idea it is to shoot matching shots on two completely different cameras?

I'm surprised hnow many people are posting on the assumptions that it's perfectly natural that this should work. Nothing could be further out. Manufacturer's stay up nights trying to make their cameras different from each other.

My 16:9 is bigger than his 16:9!! Our cameras shoot in 8:6!!

Koz

Looks like the perfect time, Koz. I guess in-camera letterboxing is a consumer thing, anyway. For pro projects I can't think of any reason to lose any part of the frame -- doing it in post is so much safer. A friend of mine actually shot a film on 35mm...then somehow his grunt DP convinced him that since they couldn't do a wide shot to cover two people in the final scene as planned, they now had to shoot that scene using a 4:3 frame (!) and then pan-and-scan the whole film to match (!!!) and *then* apply a 1:66 letterbox matte in post (!!!!!) to get a widescreen frame again. I think they lost about 50 per cent of the original intended frame.

I'm still stunned by the revelation that the DVX-100a has no anamorphic 16:9.

Yes, it's stretched and distorted, and I know I should have just shot 4x3... but the VX malfunctioned midday, so I had to use the behind the scenes cam. Koz, there's no reason to point out 'what a bad idea it was' and how I was making all these 'assumptions'. It was a bad idea clearly, but rather than hindsight lessons, I'm just looking for solutions to something that already happened. Thanks for the critique though-
Luna

Yes, sounds like it's letterboxed, not anamorphic 16:9. Turn off the Anamorphic marker on all of them before you edit. Highlight all clips in the Browser, then CONTROL-click on the Anamorphic column and choose No. Now edit in a normal non-16:9 timeline and see if there are discrepancies in the built-in 16:9 letterbox. If so, create a customized matte to match the wider one and put it over the whole project.

Greg Kozikowski wrote:

> Manufacturer's stay up nights trying to
> make their cameras different from each other.
>
> My 16:9 is bigger than his 16:9!! Our cameras shoot in 8:6!!

That is something that seems truly irritating about this particular junture in the video camera industry.

It seems like the designers of the cameras each want to think that thiers is the final and only one that anyone will ever want to use.

Standardization is a good thing and you know that there will be some kind of conference between the big players at *some* point to get everybody on the same page eventually, I would just hope it would be sooner than later.

BTW Luna, most video that is shot in anamorphic 16:9 mode will be automatically recognized as such by FCP. Therefore, it's usually unecessary to select the anamorphic checkbox. That is there to force FCP to recognize incoming footage as anamorphic in case it somehow doesn't (say, after a dub or something like that).

Andy

> BTW Luna, most video that is shot in anamorphic 16:9 mode will be
> automatically recognized as such by FCP. Therefore, it's usually unecessary
> to select the anamorphic checkbox

Are you sure about that, Andy? That's not what I remember from past experience. It's possible that my 16:9 procedures are outdated.

That said, I was pretty shocked three years ago to find out how easy it is to put the Anamorphic tag on (see above post). Once I realized the fact that footage shot on anamorphic 16:9 is going to look verticall stretched no matter what you capture it as, and that the 16:9 checkbox in the Capture Settings simply translates into a checkmark in the Anamorphic column, it explained a lot of things. I'm quite sure the only thing the 16:9 tag on a clip/DVD does is that it warns the target playback device (as well as the FCP timeline) to apply the -33.33 Aspect Ratio Distort.

Well Derek, my experience is anecdotal. I currently shoot with a Canon XL-1 onto mini DV tape. I insert that tape into a Panasonic DVCPro deck and digitize normally. I've also done this with a Sony DVCam camera/tape. I've also digitized directly from the Canon into FCP. In all cases, as long as the tape was the original recorded tape and not a dub, FCP correctly applied the -33.33 aspect distortion to the clip. I've really almost never used the anamorphic checkbox except in cases where the tape was a dub, and not even all dubs failed to work.

Maybe (I've never thought too much about it) only the dubs that weren't directly tape machine to tape machine. For instance, if it went through an analog state at some point, or else went through a digital router to get to the destination deck.

But whatever the case is, it's true that changing it after digitization is a simple task.

Andy

Cool. Thanks fot the help guys, I appreciate it. Derek, the matte sounds good.
Cheers-
L