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3:2 or 4:3 aspect ration
Hi:
I’m trying to figure out the best setting to capture and edit in. I’m working on a very home-spun, low-budget documentary using footage shot on a consumer sony mini-dv camera and am editing with FCP 6.0.
When the film is complete, I plan on projecting it on the “big screen” as well as web broadcast.
Should I be capturing and editing with a 3:2 aspect ratio or 4:3? Does it really matter?
Thanks!
Nicolle
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1 Reply
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Nicolle,
Short answer is: You shot DV, so capture and edit in DV.Your original recording is DV (aka DV25). It’s active area on the screen is 720×480 pixels. That’s a 3:2 ratio in terms of the number of pixels. But the pixels are not square. The aspect ratio of the TV screen is 4:3.
Common theory is that the best you can get from your DV original is to do a direct digital capture of the footage without recompressing it again. That means you capture as DV via a FireWire connection to the computer. This preserves all the original detail of your video.
But there are reasons to defy that. If you plan to add a ton of effects and color correction to your footage, it can be worth it to capture to an uncompressed format. DV degrades rapidly with multiple renderings. Uncompressed does not. The trouble is, it’s a heck of a lot less convenient to capture uncompressed from a consumer mini-DV camcorder–and the analog outputs of the camera may be really lousy.
A good compromise is to capture DV and edit your footage that way. But at the end of the edit, change your sequence to a less compressed format and render it. Set your rendering to High Precision YUV. This will make any titles, graphics and corrections look much better. You can easily change the sequence to DVCPro50. It’s the exact same pixel aspect ratio, but uses less compression than regular DV (aka DV25).
So, at least for a start…you shot DV, so capture DV.
-Tom
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