[Eoin Ryan]

The DVD just came out of the burner in the macpro. I played it on my 42 inch plasma TV and it looks perfect. No squiggley lines at all. I take it that the DVD will look fine on most if not all TVs? U seem to think that by deinterlacing there should be a visual difference. Can u tell me what I should be looking for? Remember that I only ticked deinterlace when I opened the QuickTime file on my desktop, in movie properties. And that I’m using PAL footage.

[Eoin Ryan]

I shot a wheel of a car. Tested it. I was seeing things. It wasn’t stretched at all. All is good. Although, I still think the 16:9 TV setting is better for anamorphic footage (I guess it will differ from TV to TV), but the 16:9 setting on my 42″ Samsung Plasma TV gives the footage black bars and it looks a lot better.

[Eoin Ryan]

I use a light at the front and a Sennheiser receiver behind it. I bought in late in ’06. I’m sure one will pop up somewhere.

[Eoin Ryan]

I’ve been burning 16:9 SD DVDs the way I’ve been told in iDVD. It’s anamorphic and fills the screen of my 42″ inch plasma widescreen TV. However, when filling the screen it seems stretched vertically. This is in the ‘Auto-Wide’ setting on my TV. If I press a button on my remote and change the setting to 16:9, then the TV displays the image with black bars and this is a lot more pleasing to watch and doesn’t look stretched. In fact, it’s perfect. What gives here? I thought 16:9 footage is supposed to fill a 16:9 TV? Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that badly stretched – but I can notice that wheels on cars aren’t perfectly round.

[Eoin Ryan]

I might get one of these, yes, thanks. It seems as though no one has a clue about the product. I should have bought two when I got it. It’s a great little piece of “equipment”.

[Eoin Ryan]

Hi, yes it doesn’t seem to make it sharper in FCPro, you’re right.

Let me run this by you and you can tell me if I’m dreaming or not:

I exported DV PAL Anamorphic on my desktop as a FCPro quicktime file, ready to drop into iDVD. I right-clicked the file, and opened as a quicktime movie. I went to properties and checked High Quality, and the quality improved on the screen before my very eyes. I saved the changes. The DVD is now burning as I write this (an hour to go). Should I see a difference in the encode/when the DVD is burned, because I ticked high quality?

[Eoin Ryan]

If I want to do it without masking anything, I believe I’d have to be shooting with an anamorphic lens. Is that correct?

Michael, you are correct in saying that the image in the clip is narrower than 16:9 letterboxed. The only way I can imagine I can get this 2:35.1 effect is by masking (which I don’t want to do) or by using a special lens. Anyone know which lens and can I use it with most digital cameras?

I believe that a lot of filmmakers (take Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood), didn’t shoot 16:9 but shot “anarmorphically”, with special lenses… This gives the 2:35.1 aspect ratio that fits on a cinema screen and is why the black bars are thicker when watching the film on a DVD release (the DVD has preserved the 2:35.1 ratio). I’m wondering do I have this right?

[Eoin Ryan]

Thanks for the links.

I was a bit startled when reading the following from the “widescreen on video” link. I use a Canon XL2 and shoot 16:9 50i PAL footage and burn anamorphic DVDs. Does this mean I’m not getting widescreen? What does he/she mean by “standard formats use anamorphic techniques”?

“There is no true 16:9 resolution for standard video, including DV, even though some newer DV cameras are being marketed as “true” 16:9 (in reality, only their picture sensors have a 16:9 aspect ratio). Standard formats use anamorphic techniques to get a widescreen 16:9 picture – i.e the final displayed picture has a wider aspect ratio than the video frame.”

[Eoin Ryan]

Yeah I asked about Quicktime Player footage quality and you answered and were correct. I’m just following up on that and am wondering that if I change the Quicktime files in Capture Scratch to high quality for a project that I’m currently working on, will it make the image appear sharper?

[Eoin Ryan]

That is truly amazing.

So simple. Yet amazing.

Does this mean that if I go into Capture Scratch and do this to quicktime files that I’m currently editing in Final Cut Pro, it will make the quality better in that particular project?