[Warren Morningstar]

I may be oversimplfying this, but I think what you’re experiencing is normal optical behavior. F-stop is technically the ratio between the focal length of the lenses and the aperature opening, so is only indrectly related to the amount of light let through. The longer the focal length, the less efficient the lens is in transmitting light. Which, if I remember correctly, is why cinema lenses use T-stops, which more accurately reflect the amount of light transmitted through the lens. As you zoom in, the lens becomes less efficient or “darker.” They compensate for this somehow in the middle exposure ranges, but when you’re wide open at wide angle, there’s nothing left to adjust when you zoom in. Same thing happens with zoom lenses on still cameras.

[Warren Morningstar]

Try the av-dv button on the remote control. Haven’t done it myself with my AH X1, but that’s how it works with my other Canon cameras…

[Warren Morningstar]

I always shoot HD and then have the camera down convert to SD during capture. Looks great. Why not capture the best quality image? You may want it at a later date. Only reason I can think of for shooting SD would be if you had something with a lot of fine detail in motion that would overwhelm the HDV codec.

[Warren Morningstar]

I’ve had a similar problem myself. I suspect the file was exported from FCP using Apple’s ProRes 422 codec. Unfortunately, there isn’t a Windows flavor of this codec. A lot of Macs don’t have it either. I think you need to have the latest version of FCP to have it. I haven’t found a work around short of re-exporting the file from FCP using a compatible codec. You can check to see how the file was encoded with Gspot — a freeware program.

[Warren Morningstar]

Bingo! Works perfectly.
Thanks very much, Jorje.
I had half-way suspected that there was a way to loop the video signal, but my limited video engineering experience predates component video, so I had no idea which leg to use.

[Warren Morningstar]

Well, I guess one gets what one pays for. There is no provision that I can find for the Intensity Pro card to take an external sync signal, nor to send one. Even though the name says Pro, I suppose one shouldn’t expect professional features for $300.

Maybe I can find a $50 genlock box…

Thanks again for the suggestions.

[Warren Morningstar]

Thanks for the suggestion, Margus. I tried it, but it doesn’t solve the problem. The deck “wants” ref video in sync with the source video, apparently. Using the camera as ref video simply changed the position of the sync roll in the monitor.
This may be more of a cosmetic issue than anything else, since the deck records fine and the playback is fine. But it’s not confidence inspiring when you’re exporting to tape and watching the video roll in the deck monitor…

[Warren Morningstar]

PS,
I’m running Pro 2.0 on a Dell 690 with Xeon Quad 2.33 Ghz processors.

[Warren Morningstar]

Thanks for the quick response, Mike.
But I’m not sure that will solve my problem. Sorry I wasn’t clear. The images are all the same size edge-to-edge, but some are just slightly zoomed in. I guess that might be something AE could handle with motion tracking, but I really don’t have the time to learn how to do that right now. I’m hoping for a quick miracle fix, but I suspect that’s a vain hope…

[Warren Morningstar]

A warning.
I downloaded a trial of AOA DVDripper and after several days, my security program detected malicious code (Backdoor.Win32.Rbot.cqk) in the executable. For me, that was enough to zap the program off my computer.

Warren