Widescreen with Canon MV901

Hi all,

I just picked up a Canon MV901, my first experience with digital camcorders, which has a widescreen mode. From what I've read, some cheap cameras have a fake widescreen which is just 4:3 chopped into a letterbox size, but from what I can gather from the specifcations on this one, it's using far more pixels in 16:9 mode than 4:3, so I think it's a true widescreen.

Anyway, I plug it in with my firewire cable, create a new iMovie DV widescreen project, and it immediately comes up as DV-PAL, not DV-PAL-Widescreen.

If I leave the "automatic DV pillarboxing and letterboxing" preference switched on, iMovie letterboxes my imported video. If I switch off the auto option, iMovie just imports the video in a squashed up incorrect ratio.

So I tried unplugging the camera and creating a fresh widescreen project. It comes up as DV-NTSC-Widescreen (my camera is PAL by the way). As soon as I plug my camera in it switches the project to DV-PAL again. Still no widescreen.

I also tried adding a widescreen theme opening page to my project to try and force it to widescreen. When I plug in the camera, iMovie then complains it is the camera is the wrong format for the project.

I'm out of ideas now. I've found similar, but not identical issues in the forum, but those solutions aren't helping. Nothing on the Canon site or general Googling either. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks very much!

-Ben