Widescreen DV Discussion

[Tom Sawyer]

Why don't you shoot in anamorphic?

I don't think the GL-2 has true anamorphic, it stretches the image. The camera looks good, but when you look at your footage on a large TV monitor you can see the difference from the expensive high end cameras. I just want the cleanest/clearest image I can make. I wish I had a HD camera, in the future looking back it will be nice to have the highest quality possible. For web video you can't tell the difference.

[FTL_Ian]

I don't think the GL-2 has true anamorphic, it stretches the image.

That is the purpose of anamorphic, as I understand it.

anamorphosis - An image that appears distorted unless it is viewed from a special angle or with a special instrument.

The camera looks good, but when you look at your footage on a large TV monitor you can see the difference from the expensive high end cameras. I just want the cleanest/clearest image I can make. I wish I had a HD camera, in the future looking back it will be nice to have the highest quality possible. For web video you can't tell the difference.

GL2 Discussion:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/showpost.php?p=220675&postcount=9

Pixel Ratio Discussion:
http://www.highend3d.com/boards/index.php?s=35547e4877ed0786b208a4415027dcd3&showtopic=239770&view=findpost&p=274221

In summary, your camera is anamorphic and you do not lose any resolution by shooting in 16:9 mode.  All you are changing is the pixel ratio from .9 to 1.185.  Therefore, you can have that widescreen look without any loss of resolution! 

[FTL_Ian]

So, as I understand it shooting in anamorphic widescreen DV results in higher square pixel resolution.

The final horizontal result of shooting in 4:3 (0.88 pixel ratio) is 720 x 0.88 = 640
640 x 480 = 307,200 square pixels

The final horizontal result of shooting in 16:9 (1.185 pixel ratio) is 720 x 1.185 = 854
854 x 480 = 409,920 square pixels

That's over a 33% increase in square pixel resolution.

[error]

Whether I shoot in 4:3 or 16:9, the camera records video at NTSC standard 720x480 pixels. In neither mode are the pixels entirely square. This is fine for television, where the width of a "pixel" is largely irrelevant, because it can vary; only the height of a "pixel" is fixed. Either way you get 525 scan lines, 480 of which contain video content. Along the horizontal, the 720 "pixels" are displayed evenly across the width of the TV, whether conventional or widescreen. (The aspect ratio is also transmitted along with the video to your widescreen television, so it knows if you're trying to display 4:3 content on a 16:9 TV and can pillarbox it.)

Along with the video data, the camera records the aspect ratio. Where you run into problems is when you download this data into a computer, and the aspect ratio information gets lost along the way while you're busy editing the video and compressing it for display on a computer.

YouTube is infamous for ignoring the aspect ratio embedded into a video file and displaying the video as if the pixels were supposed to be square, even if they are not. I generally deal with this by encoding a special copy which is scaled down to have square pixels and feeding that to YouTube.

[Tom Sawyer]

So, as I understand it shooting in anamorphic widescreen DV results in higher square pixel resolution.

The final horizontal result of shooting in 4:3 (0.88 pixel ratio) is 720 x 0.88 = 640
640 x 480 = 307,200 square pixels

The final horizontal result of shooting in 16:9 (1.185 pixel ratio) is 720 x 1.185 = 854
854 x 480 = 409,920 square pixels

That's over a 33% increase in square pixel resolution.

Thanks I started shooting 4:3 because the monitors I was likely to use were that. I have since been confused by if indeed it would give higher resolution. I read contradictory claims. I'll check out the links you provided.

[Tom Sawyer]

After doing some research  now my ol' brain hurts.

I think the way to look at this is that the same number of pixels on the pickup chips have to cover a larger area image. You don't "lose" resolution, like letterbox which just chops off image area. But, it is not the same as having a wider "native" chip. The same horizontal resolution is stretched, thus the detail is sharper in the 4:3 mode. That was my gut feeling on the matter.

I think the 3D link isn't really relevant to compare to cameras with finite resolution.

Not sure that I can do a good job of explaining this. 

One thing I do shooting that I've seen make a big difference is my camera has a frame mode which makes 30 full frames a second rather than 60 fields of interlaced video. It looks much better.