iMovie and DV 16:9 ratio??

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Level 3

617 points

iMovie and DV 16:9 ratio??

Hi!
I've just bought a Sony DCR-HC94E DV camera. Just plugged it in to iMovie and everything is fine.
The issue is that the Sony camera can flip it's ratio to 16:9 widescreen, but iMovie (as far as I can see) forces it to capture at 4:3 ratio even when the Sony is set to 16:9.
Is there a way that I can import the footage at the recored ratio, rather than 4:3 or do I have to use another application to capture it at the right ratio?
BTW, this is not HD DV it's just 3 megapixel normal DV.

Thanks in advance

G5 Dual 1.8 (10.4.x) + G4 400 AGP (10.2.8), Mac OS X (10.4.6), iPod with dock 15gbs Mighty Mouse

Posted on May 11, 2006 6:52 AM

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Answer 1

May 11, 2006 6:57 AM in response to Rob Snow

Did you start a DV widescreen project?

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Answer 2

May 11, 2006 9:27 AM in response to Rob Snow

I think the Sony standard DV cameras use the same number of pixels as a 4:3 ratio but set the pixel aspect ratio differently to get the wide screen effect. When you capture (even if you set the project to wide screen) iMovie HD still imports at that 4:3 ratio but should detect the aspect ratio and letterbox automatically after the import. It keeps the 4:3 but blacks out the top and bottom.

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Answer 3

Rob Snow Author

Level 3

617 points

May 11, 2006 9:45 AM in response to Daniel Slagle

How stupid do I feel!?

I made a new test project and looked in the pop down menu and there was THAT setting DV widescreen.
Now everything is at the correct ration.
Sorry to say Paul that the aspect ration when importing at 4:3 standard iMovie project when the camera is on 16:9 is distorted, but is fine when in Widescreen DV iMovie project.

Thanks

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Answer 4

May 11, 2006 10:24 AM in response to Rob Snow

Yep widesceen DV and DV is the same amout of data just in a different format.
--
Daniel C. Slagle
Keeper of the "Unofficial" iMovie FAQ

http:// iMovie.danslagle.com

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Answer 5

May 11, 2006 10:37 AM in response to Rob Snow

OK, good it works for you but that's what happened to me. My camera is 3+ years old though, so may work a bit differently.

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Answer 6

May 11, 2006 11:22 AM in response to Paul R. Wood

Well they do it 2 different ways:

The right way (squeezing the image)
The wrong way (cropping the image)

My awesome 3 CCD VX-2000 does it the wrong way 😟
My new Sony does it the right way 🙂
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-etc.html#widescreen

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Answer 7

May 11, 2006 12:50 PM in response to Daniel Slagle

The right way (squeezing the image)

Even my old Sony TRV320 Digital 8 does 16:9 the right anamorphic way (i.e. no black borders in the image).

AFAIK many camcorders' CCDs have extra pixels so they can cut a 4:3 or 16:9 ratio out of it (especially camcorders that can take megapixel still images).

And even if their CCDs didn't have enough extra pixels, they can cheat by interpolating the missing pixels for 16:9 (of course that degrades resolution compared to the 4:3 image which uses more of the CCD area). I believe my TRV320 uses the latter method.

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