Betacam SP 625 PAL 16×9 capture with MediaExpress

[Andreas Wideroe]

I now see that if I choose a 16×9 project in Premiere the film has the normal aspect ratio during capture and edit, but when I playback the captured .avi file in Ie. Windows Media Player it is still 4×3.

This leads me to think that aspect ratio on Anamorphic SD material is infact captured as a 4×3 file and it is up to the playback/edit system to play it back in the right aspect. Or am I way off here? 🙂

Cheers,
Andreas

—
Norsk Smalfilm AS
https://www.smalfilm.no

Filmshooting | Com
https://www.filmshooting.com

[Jay Epperson]

Standard definition digital video does not use square pixels and encodes everything at either 720×486 (NTSC) or 720×576 (PAL). Depending on the content stored, the video is “resized” to square pixels during playback using either 4:3 or 16:9 ratios (essentially an anamorphic squeeze). Certain containers like QuickTime MOV support flags inside the stream that allows you to specify what kind of content you are indeed storing (but it’s still stored as 720×576). AVI, however, does not support such flags so the playback is always 1:1. What you are seeing in Windows Media player is the raw 720×576 video, without any kind of square pixel correction applied, and if it’s anamorphic 16:9 content, everything should appear much much skinnier. You are not seeing 4:3, however, as 720×576 viewed as square pixels actually has a ratio of 5:4.

[Kristian Lam]

Hi Andreas,

As per Jay’s response, your capture in SD is always going to be 720×576 (PAL) or 720×486 (NTSC). It’s the display device that will stretch out the picture to provide the 16:9 preview.

In Media Express, you can toggle the option to monitor your captured clips as 16:9.

regards

Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design