-
Playback Settings & DV Hardware
Happy Easter,
I have created a new DV project in widescreen, with a resolution of 720×420, and I want it to play back through the camera and through to the telly. I have got everything hooked up perfectly, but it will not playback the project through the hardware. Playback Settings is grayed out, so I cannot adjust the settings.
Opening a new project with standard 720×576 allows playback through the hardware, but why not my widescreen project?
Again, any help is greatly appreciated. This has confused me no end!
Thanks,
David. -
3 Replies
-
David,
Is there any reason why your (PAL?) widescreen DV project is not set to 720×576, which is what would be recorded by a PAL DV camera set to true widescreen (16:9 anamorphic) mode? All PAL SD DV recording is done at 720×576, and it’s only the effective pixel aspect ratio that changes.
Martin
-
Oh, that would be my mistake then.
I purposely changed the project resolution to the widescreen settings because I wanted to reframe my 4:3 shots into widescreen – to hide the cr*p bits!
I am guessing that was the wrong thing to do! Any suggestions on how else to go about it instead?
Thanks,
davidnagel -
If you want to reframe your shots for better (artistic) effect, and if you want to keep the end product as a normal PAL-sized video, then you should “crop” by zooming in on them slightly (or as much as is required), and then re-position (ie move) them in the x-y plane to get the best framing. You can do this with the standard “Motion” effect which is there by default on every video clip.
If the content to be cropped is generally top or bottom of frame, and you want to convert everything from 4:3 to 16:9, then start a 16:9 project, import your 4:3 footage and make sure “Interpret Footage” for each clip is set to D1/DV PAL (ie 4:3). The clips will appear full height but with black bands down either side. You can then use the motion effect to reposition and zoom in on them. Just click on the preview/monitor window and you will see a fram with handles around the video clip. Use the handles to zoom, and click anywhere inside the frame to drag the clip position to re-frame it.
If you’re not making a DVD or exporting to tape as the end product, but making a multimedia file for a web site or to play on a PC, there is another simple approach. Just use a standard 4:3 project, edit as normal and then make up a title with black boxes covering the areas that you want to crop (eg top and bottom). Place it on the highest numbered video track and stretch it to the length of the project. Then go through all the video clips and and reposition them behind the mask to improve the framing where necessary. Finally, export via the Media Encoder and use the cropping in the encoder settings to export just the video, and not the mask.
Hope that covers most of the options…
Martin
http://www.zenvideo.co.uk
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up