Hi Guys,
I've been out of the video hobby for some time, but now want to get back into making normal home video's etc. The issue i have is that my camera is circa 12 years old and only shoots in 4:3 mode. I don't really want to replace it (being between jobs at the moment makes this impractical) as the camera is a nice 3CCD Panasonic that has a host of functions which could be useful, and whilst there appear to be loads of 1080p HD camcorders from around £150 - £170, they seem basic point and shoot, with some not having an ext mike or ear socket. It may well mean that a new HD camera that has similar spec to my Panasonic would be £500 or more. So I'm stuck with what I've got.
But as you know, most modern TVs tend to stretch the 4:3 footage making people look squat and dumpy...so I need to convert the footage into 16:9 aspect. I followed a tutorial on the web about scaling the 4:3 footage to 134 %, which worked on the PC (I tend to centre a lot of footage so cropping that occurred was still acceptable), but the resulting DVD when played on the TV resulted in very blurry motion when the camera was moved, which I believe is something to do with interlacing ??
I had to make an ISO as my DVD burner is not detected in Premier pro CS2 (a common issue I've discovered and needs a registry hack to fix !!), and the ISO was then burnt to disk via Nero.
Can anyone advise on the best way to scale / convert 4:3 footage to 16:9 that will result in nice decent bitrate (read bright and not looking like film) that is also stable when played on a TV
Cheers
Malcolm
Hi Malcolm
I wouldn't upscale your 4:3 footage for the same reasons that you mention. With my 4:3 projects, using Premiere Pro CS6, I create a 16:9 project and import the 4:3 footage into that. I may have to slightly upscale the 4:3 footage until no black top & bottom edges are visible. Alternatively I can create two video tracks with the same 4:3 footage one on top of the other. On the bottom track scale then apply a blur effect to it. This gives a nice colourful background to the 4:3 top track. Or create a plain/gradiant background on the bottom track apply a blur effect and give it some degree of rotation.
Harry
I agree with Harry. Actually I import the footage as 4:3 into a 1080i HD 16:9 project because then anything extra you add - graphics, stills, captions - all look sharper.
Derek
I have done the blurred image under the unblurred 4x3 and it works well.
I do remember downloading a plug in for premiere with Matrox that was a pretty good aspect ratio converter. I corrected a friend's video that was shot 4x3 by mistake back in the day.
I guess you could also see if you could pick up an anamorphic screw on lens cheap on ebay. But they tended to cost a fair bit at the time.
Probably no help to you, Malcolm, but for anyone lucky enough to have retained their DV Storm, there is a Storm Picture-In-Picture video effect which enables 4x3 footage to be placed on a 16x9 background in real time with no loss of quality.
The advantage of this is that, for example, the footage can be re-sized to fit into the background such that no part of the picture is lost because of overscan on a TV screen. I used this technique recently with some Standard 8mm footage which Tom Hardwick (that stalwart of the DV Forums) converted to video for me. The whole of each frame is seen (and Tom has a special technique that enables the absolute maximum exposed area of each frame to be displayed, even including the normally-unseen area between the sprocket holes)
Thanks for the comments, seems that for making DVDs from 4;3 footage I need to stick to that format, as scaling doesn't work, and I'm not a fan of the blurred backgrounds either side of the clip. So it looks like a new camera is in order.
Now here's a question for you:
If I understand things correctly, my 3CCD Panasonic has three mono chips of full resolution, with an RGB filter arrangement which is combined to give the full colour image. But in a single chip the CCD has a colour mask so 1/3 pixels get red, 1/3 blue and 1/3 green. However technology in the past 12 years has no doubt changed, and I'm wondering that a modern single chip camera may give an equally decent picture as my 12 year old 3CCD camera ?
Budget of £170, what camcorder would you guys recommend... my only criteria (other than a good 1080P image) is sockets for a microphone
If I understand things correctly, my 3CCD Panasonic has three mono chips of full resolution, with an RGB filter arrangement which is combined to give the full colour image. But in a single chip the CCD has a colour mask so 1/3 pixels get red, 1/3 blue and 1/3 green. However technology in the past 12 years has no doubt changed, and I'm wondering that a modern single chip camera may give an equally decent picture as my 12 year old 3CCD camera ?
Almost - it's actually 50% green, 25% red and 25% blue.
As for the $64,000 dollar question, it would be possible to write pages!
Simply, there's no simple yes or no answer. It depends on sensor size, photosite count, way in which the sensor is read, underlying technology etc etc.
One thing I would say is that 3 chip/1 chip issues are likely to be dwarfed by the difference between SD and HD - so yes, get a new camera for that apart from the 4:3/16:9 considerations!
Dedicated video cameras are likely to be around for quite a while in the expensive real pro sector, but lower down nowadays I'd look at what are being referred to as hybrid still/video cameras and not bother with a consumer video only camera now
Well I've been playing about with Corel Video studio and have produced a DVD in 16:9 format from 4:3 footage that matches the quality of the original 4;3 version I made a while back. I used the distort function, fit to 16:9 screen aspect and maintain aspect ratio. This was then exported to a DVD using the DVD plugin and the resulting disc had no motion de interlacing blur....
Whilst I appreciate that even a cheap HD 1080 camcorder like those in Curry's will have a better sharper resolution than my Panasonic 3CCD camera, for the amount of video work I do, I feel that I'm happy with the results I get via this process. I know these new HD camera's retail from around £150, but with money being tight I'll be happy to wait for now. All I need to do is come up with a card mask to place on the monitor screen to enable me to record footage to take in the zooming effect the conversion has on the footage.