16:9 SD editing on Media100HD

[Floh Peters]

[CameronT] “Can the Media 100HD output 16:9 (SD)”

As Media 100 i, HD can output 16:9. I think you are mixing up some things there. If you shoot in 16:9 you will end up with 16:9 anamorph material, and Media 100 i and HD will output 16:9 anamorph. Probably you want to know if you can output the 16:9 material as 4:3 letterboxed (with black bars at the top and bottom)?!? Media 100 HD can do that, but it requires a “conform” render pass. For a 5 minute program this will take ~5 minutes to process.

[Michael Slowe]

Floh, I am now in a muddle following your reply to the query! I have just been editing some 16:9 originated material and I thought that by setting the project preference to 16:9 I was getting genuine native 16:9 back. It is true that my Sony monitor, switched to 16:9, is giving a letterbox picture but I thought that was because it is only a 4:3 screen. What is this anamorph that you refer to?
On another subject I am now editing HDV (converted to DV for the time being) on Media100i and hope that after NAB there will be a magic solution (from somewhere, maybe not Media 100) which will make it possible to edit HDV on Media100 HD – any further thoughts on this?

Michael Slowe

[Floh Peters]

16:9 Anamorph is what you are seeing. If you need to switch your Monitor to 16:9 to display the correct image you have an anamorph signal (the pixels are not square but stretched). Otherwise you have a 4:3 letterboxed image (16:9 with black bars, but always displayed at 4:3 ratio, and with the disadvantage of loosing the resolution you got with the anamorph 16:9 image).

[Michael Slowe] “On another subject I am now editing HDV (converted to DV for the time being) on Media100i and hope that after NAB there will be a magic solution (from somewhere, maybe not Media 100) which will make it possible to edit HDV on Media100 HD – any further thoughts on this?”

Media 100 is working on a FireWire support solution for Media 100 HD and sw. I don

[Jim Calahan]

We are almost exclusive 16×9 SD as that is what PBS wants is widescreen whether it’s HD or not. Your SD recorders are putting a 720×486 signal on tape whether 16×9 or not. 16×9 SD is an anamorphic signal and will have to be stretched for viewing even on a 16×9 monitor so that everything looks normal. When we edit with m100HD we monitor the component output upconverted to HD. HD is true 16×9 and looks great even when we upconvert using the m100HD. We shoot mostly 50mb DVCpro but do get DVcam and miniDV and while they don’t up convert as well they look pretty darn good. The m100HD will also convert 4×3 to 16×9 as we do with all our old betaSP material, it basicly blows it up and crops the top and bottom. While this is not the best it looks better to me than what most consumer 16×9 monitors do by stretching only the side portions of the footage leaving the center alone(my wife insists on watching NTSC TV this way at home on our 16×9 monitor). Most home viewers don’t like the bars on the sides but will except letterbox as most if not all the networks are showing during primetime NTSC. We send PBS or APT both letterboxed shows and Animorphic 16×9 on DigiBeta which PBS later upconverts and adds 708 captions. I hope that makes some sense, one of the reasons we chose m100HD was the fact it will mix and match formats.

Jim Calahan
KVIE, Sacramento

[Michael Slowe]

Thanks Floh, that would be a good start but would Version 10 HD, even with firewire, be able to take in HDV, allow us to edit in the normal way, and master back an HDV programme? The format has pretty darn good picture quality we are told but not much good if we have to downgrade to DV to do anything with it. Are Media 100 likely to find a way to overcome the fact that HDV is MPEG compressed?

Michael Slowe

[Floh Peters]

[Michael Slowe] “Are Media 100 likely to find a way to overcome the fact that HDV is MPEG compressed?”

I think so. I think the more tricky point than the MPEG compression is the fact that HDV uses LongGOP compression, which does not give you a full image on every frame. But I think that HDV is a very interesting format these days, and I believe they will find a way to support that.

[Cameront]

Thank you all for your responses. I’ve got the reply from Media 100 that “SD 16:9 video out is anamorphic so you need to run it through a router or some other device to give you your letterboxed look” So it seems we can’t get that letterboxed look directly output from the Media 100HD. Looks like I need to get an aspect ratio converter or something.

[Floh Peters]

[CameronT] “Looks like I need to get an aspect ratio converter or something”

As I said, you also can use the “Conform” command to convert your 16:9 anamorphic material to 4:3 letterboxed. It will need to process, but it is quick.

[Michael J c]

There is still no real-time way to output a 16×9 SD program to 4×3 letterbox… right?

I would think the hardware (if not the software) should be able to handle that by now.

[Floh Peters]

[Michael C.] “I would think the hardware (if not the software) should be able to handle that by now.”

As far as I know the hardware is capable of doing that. The support for that simply has not been finished in software.