Is 720P 960 or 1280 pixels wide?

Question

Is 720P 960 or 1280 pixels wide?

In FCP, the Preset choices for Sequence Settings include DVCPro 720P, which turns out to be 960 pixels wide. Panasonic brags that their D2 camera (which I just shot my first footage with) is 1280 pixels wide. Then there is the Canvas "view as square pixels" choice.

This gets real confusing real fast. (I remember something called "The Industrial Revolution", which involve STANDARDIZED interchangeable parts, which fueled American success and democracy), but that concept seems to have gone by the wayside in the Digital Era. Oh, well...)

Can anyone explain the actual resolution of 720P and the correct "square" setting to poor me?

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Aug 26, 2007 11:42 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Aug 26, 2007 12:08 PM in response to Seth Martin Hill

Similar to how 16x9 DV footage is 720x480 compared to 4x3 DV footage at 720x480, DVCProHD is an anamorphic format. It records the signal at 960x720, which is then expanded to 1280x720 in FCP.

It's all about the pixel aspect ratio.

If Panasonic has a new camera that is actually recording DVCProHD 1280x720, you may have to create a custom setup in FCP, if there isn't one there already.

Reply

Answer 2

Aug 26, 2007 12:46 PM in response to thrillcat editorial

I was wrong. Panasonic's HVX200 P2 camera records 720P at 960x720 pixels. The Preset in FCP for 720 P is also 960x720. I had been looking at Wikipedia's explanation of 720P, which states that it is 1280x720.

I'm still confused about "Square Pixels," however. If I set the Viewer or Canvas to show square pixels, the image looks OK; if I set the Viewer or Canvas to not show square pixels, the image looks distorted. I would think that the pixels would have to be not-square to expand 960 to 1280, but the opposite seems to be the case.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Reply

Answer 3

Aug 26, 2007 3:42 PM in response to Seth Martin Hill

The view as square pixels is a setting telling FCP to display the video as it would be seen on video, even though video pixels often have a different aspect ratio than a computer monitor. DV, for instance, is .89 or .9 (depending on the application). Turning off the square pixels setting tells fcp to not bother correcting for the difference and is useful in viewing actual video scanlines/pixels directly.

Patrick

Reply