Capturing 16:9 in VS9

FSSE · Post by **FSSE** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 1:26 pm

Hi,

I use a Canon MV800 Videocamera which uses its full CCD when shooting video in 16:9 format. So I would also like to capture this in 16:9. But each time I do some capturing with VS9 the program tells me it just captured 4:3 video. Somehow VS9 does not recognize the footage as 16:9. Does VS9 have the ability to regognize the format of the captured video (4:3 or 16:9) or do you have to tell the program the format of the video. I cannot find any setting for this.

Thnks

FSSE[/b]

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 7:05 pm

I have a Panasonic PV-GS400, and I can capture in 16:9 widescreen format without any problems. Are you capturing through a Firewire (DV) connection, or how do you get the video into your PC?

One thing you might try is capturing using WinDV, and playing the AVI file captured by it using Windows Media Player.

The resolution of 4:3 and 16:9 DV video is identical, but in the case of a 16:9 aspect ration, the pixels aren't square, and the DV codec and media player must take this into consideration when displaying the video.

If the WinDV-captured video doesn't play correctly using Windows Media Player, you may have a DV codec on your system that doesn't handle non-square pixels correctly, or the camcorder may not be setting the aspect ratio information in the DV data stream header, but that seems improbable.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 10:43 pm

You can also try adjusting your Project Properties (File > Project Properties > MPEG), at least in mpeg-2 format, to ensure that VS9 is set to 16:9 on the General tab > Display Aspect Ratio. I think you will then also have to ensure that the Perform Non-Square Pixel Rendering box on the first tab is also checked... And you would need to ensure that a 16:9 template is chosen in Tools > Make Movie Manager for your final product.

FSSE · Post by **FSSE** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 12:25 pm

I use a firewire connection and I capture directly to MPEG. I wouldn't know why one should capture in large AVI files when the computer is fast enough to work with MPEG. But as I understand from your reply the format of the video (16:9 or 4:3) is coded somewhere in the AVI. Is this information also coded in MPEG files? Could this be the answer to my problem? I'm also not sure what kind of codec I use, where can I see this? I have WinXP Pro SP2 (Should be oke according to Ulead).

I am going to capture with WinDV in AVI right now, lets see what happens.

grtz FSSE

Trevor Andrew · Post by **Trevor Andrew** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 1:11 pm

Hi

When you capture to Dv-Avi via Firewire, you are actually coping the video from your camera to the pc.
No re-coding takes place, what you have is what you get.

When you capture to Mpeg the program re-codes the information using the settings you have chosen in the capture properties options cogwheel.

Do a test, capture to Dv-Avi.
Just 10 seconds should do. Now right click the clip in the timeline, do you see 16:9 in the attributes.
If you do then your camera has indeed recorded 16:9 aspect.

Repeat for Dvd / Mpeg capture. If you now see 4:3 then you need to set you capture properties.

In the Options Cogwheel / capture property settings / advanced / select 16:9 from Aspect Ratio box.

Hope this helps

FSSE · Post by **FSSE** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 2:38 pm

Thanks for the support everybody.

I just find out that I had WinXP with MediaPlayer v8.0 and this version does not work with non-square-pixels. This means that 16:9 video is sqeeuzed in a 4:3 window. After upgrading to MediaPlayer v10 I saw a perfect 16:9 video. I also noticed that the default capture properties are very weird. You should pay good attention to it. The VS9-manual is not very clear about it.

FSSE.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 5:20 pm

Just for grins and giggles, I would capture about one minute of DV video to your harddrive, and then separately encode that to MPEG2 format using the "100% Quality" setting and a bitrate of 8000Kbps. If it takes your computer more than one minute to encode that, it can't possibly perform the DV capture and concurrent full-quality MPEG2 transcoding in realtime. If you capture directly to MPEG2, you are most likely sacrificing quality in the final DVD.

FSSE · Post by **FSSE** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 6:26 pm

Great idea THoff, it took me exactly 1:20 minuts to render an DV-AVI File to DVD-MPEG (both at 16:9, so no scaling). The Video length was also 1:20. So, in theory, you could say realtime rendering can be done. But because thats just theory I'm not going to capture in MPEG anymore. You convinced me.

Just for the record: I've got a P4, 2.4Ghz

FSSE