Combining 16:9 with 4:3?

[maxfrost01]

Hi, All

I have some older SD DV footage (4:3) that I want to combine with recently shot High Def, mpeg2 footage (16:9).

I don't want to make my SD people look fat or my HD people look thin (though that does have some appeal ).

What's the best way of putting these together without distorting the pictures? I would prefer to end up with a widescreen DVD.

And what properties should I go for? Can I keep the higher quality of the HD film and accept that quality will fall on the SD elements of the film, or must I accept SD quality on all clips (i.e. downgrade the HD shots)?

Any ideas?

[GeorgeW]

Hi, All

I have some older SD DV footage (4:3) that I want to combine with recently shot High Def, mpeg2 footage (16:9).

I don't want to make my SD people look fat or my HD people look thin (though that does have some appeal ).

What's the best way of putting these together without distorting the pictures? I would prefer to end up with a widescreen DVD.

Some folks prefer to artificaially convert their SD 4:3 to 16:9. A technique I've used a few times is to add a blurred background video to fill the 16:9, while keeping the SD 4:3 video in tact (maybe a little crop off the top/bottom). Here's a link to a guide that talks about this approach:
Faking it: Making 4:3 footage work in 16:9 projects

And what properties should I go for? Can I keep the higher quality of the HD film and accept that quality will fall on the SD elements of the film, or must I accept SD quality on all clips (i.e. downgrade the HD shots)?

Any ideas?

If your delivery format will be SD DVD, then you will have to downconvert your Hi-def footage to SD. If your delivery will be HD-DVD (or Blu-ray or even HD delivery on a computer like wmv-hd), then you can keep your current HD resolutions, and try to upconvert your SD footage...

Regards,
George

[maxfrost01]

Hi, George

Thanks for the link to 'making 4:3 footage work in 16:9' - this looks like it will tell me everything I need to know. Perfect.

On the subject of downconverting/upconverting footage........

I have jchunter's tutorial on working with High Def which tells me all about downconverting HDV. I currently follow his advice for all my HDV work as I do not yet have a Blue Ray or HD DVD burner - this will come in time and when budget allows. But I always edit and save a High Def version so I am ready for the future!

I guess this is the route I would prefer to go with the combined SD/HDV film - saving a copy in HDV (and thus keeping the higher resolution of the HDV clips) and then downconverting the whole film so I can burn and watch a SD version.

This means I would begin by upconverting the SD clips. I don't know how to do this. Can you point me to a tutorial that would help?

Many thanks,