I bought a new Panasonic GS-400 which I love. It allows to record in 4:3 or 16:9. Most new tvs are now coming in 16:9 format. My question is, if I record in 16:9, when I burn my movie does the software let me decide if I want the dvd formated for 16:9 or 4:3? If i play a 16:9 recording from my panasonic as is on a 4:3 tv it looks squished. If i hook it up to a 16:9 tv it will look fine. I want to have a dvd that will play normal on a 16:9 and have the black bars on top and bootm on a 4:3 tv. Any suggestions? or would i have to burn two versions of the movie?? Please help. I need this info soon.
You probably don't realize how difficult is to give a good answer to such a simple question ;-)
First of all, many miniDV camcorders don't actually record in true 16:9. They simply crop a section at the top and the bottom of the image (they simply put black area's on the bottom and the top). You will have to check the manual of your model what it does.
Next, the encoding: if you have true 16:9 footage you will have to tell that to your MPEG-2 encoder. It does not make any difference in the encoding of the image itself (because the actual framesize of 16:9 and 4:3 is the same), but the MPEG does contain a flag which tells if the image is actually 16:9 or 4:3.
Now authoring: in some advanced authoring tools you can actually tell how the player should deal with the 16:9 stream on the DVD when connected to a 4:3 TV. Unfortunately you cannot change this setting in all authoring programs.
The last parameter in the row is the DVD player. On Many players you can set how 16:9 material should be shown on a 4:3 TV. If you used an authoring program in which you can change the setting (as explained above) the DVD player may understand it...
All in all it is less straightforward than you would think. Anyway, what I would recommedn if you are serious about tru 16:9 and you want to have full control over what happens if you play it on a 16:9 and a 4:3 TV, I would recommend to use TMPGEnc for encoding (it is one of the encoders that can set the 16:9 flag) and DVDlab for authoring (it can set all paramters to tell players how to handel the DVD).
Not a bad choice anyway because TMPGEnc is one of the best encoders around and DVDlab is absolutely the best DVD authoring program offering professional capabilities in a consumer level priced program...
I have the PV-GS400 also. The 16:9 mode is called "Cinema mode". It doesn't change the image, just puts black bars on teh top and bottom. As far as I can tell the image is still 4:3 it just has those bars to make it look different. When I encode said footage with TMPGEnc I use the normal 4:3 aspect ratio setting and it works fine. The image shows up on a TV with those black bars giving the appearance of a 16:9 image.
Stan,
yes that is the "cinema" mode. But if you use the "wide" mode it records in 16:9 and the image is squished on the screen. If you use the "pro-cinema" mode it is 16:9 squished but recorded at 30 fps to mimic film.
Thank you so much for the info! I was filming outside the country and just put all 40 hours of footage on my hard drive and began editing. Your trick worked like a charm. I edited in adobe premiere (with chapter marks), saved it as an AVI then converted the AVI to MPEG with TMPGEnc that you recommended. I then used Sonic mydvd to burn (it came free with my laptop). The only problem I am having is that none of the chapter divisions work. Its all one big chapter. Do I lose the chapter markings when I convert or encode? Thanks again to everyone for their help. I really appreciate it as I am an amateur new documentary film maker.
I never used Chapter marks in Premiere, because I don't like the authoring capabilities of it. The chapter marks that you can enter in Premiere will certainly not be recognized in other authoring programs. Best to do is create chapter points in the DVD authoring program that you use.
