Boostrail
Distinguished Member
Hi
I would like to recount my recent experience of trying to produce a real widescreen DVD from material shot on an early DV camcorder in Cinema mode. As a consequence of my experience I would like some advice on whether I could have done it differently and/or how I might do this better by upgrading one ore more of my software packages. I have read the FAQ's on this and it appears my old Panasonic does it the "Wrong way"
Cinema mode on my camcorder produces a picture which is 16:9 but letterboxed into a 576x720 4:3 display.
I have Ulead vs9.0 which I have used off and on for a few years now to edit my camera footage -imported via firewire. This has 16:9 mode but this is the first time I have attempted to use it. I also have Adobe Premiere Elements 2 which I got bundled in when I bought Photoshop Elements 6 a year ago. I have not used Premiere before.
With Ulead with project settings in 16: 9 mode the resultant DVD gave a display on my LCD TV of a 4:3 pillar box with a 16:9 display within it. Ok I could expand this using the controls of the TV but not ideal!
I then found that if I left the project settings to 4:3 but changed the burn settings to 16:9 I got a DVD that showed a full width picture on the LCD but this was still letterboxed within what was now a 16:9 display . I still had black bands top and bottom and everybody/thing looked short and fat!
So I thought I have got to produce an anamorphic full height version of my pictures that when expanded by the widescreen flag it will fill the 16:9 display. I could find no way of doing this in Ulead v9.0 however?
So I looked at Premiere and found I could expand the picture laterally or vertically at will. After a bit of calculating I applied a 133.3% vertical expansion and lo and behold it looked like I had the basis of a picture that would deliver the goods if expanded by a widescreen flag. Hoorah! However I could find no way of setting a widescreen flag to burn in Premiere so I exported the modified movie as .avi and imported it into Ulead as a 4:3 project added a title screen etc and burnt to DVD with 16:9 set in the burn conditions.
Ive got a DVD now that automatically plays as full widescreen.
The problem is that I seem to have lost a fair bit of picture quality in the process which I assume is down to the expansion and re-coding to .avi?
Whilst I am contemplating buying a new HD camcorder it strikes me that upgrading later versions of one or the other of my software packages may perform this task more efficiently or have I missed something in my current versions. I would greatly appreciate any comments that would enable me to produce a better quality widescreen DVD from the original DV footage.
Many thanks in anticipation.
I would like to recount my recent experience of trying to produce a real widescreen DVD from material shot on an early DV camcorder in Cinema mode. As a consequence of my experience I would like some advice on whether I could have done it differently and/or how I might do this better by upgrading one ore more of my software packages. I have read the FAQ's on this and it appears my old Panasonic does it the "Wrong way"
Cinema mode on my camcorder produces a picture which is 16:9 but letterboxed into a 576x720 4:3 display.
I have Ulead vs9.0 which I have used off and on for a few years now to edit my camera footage -imported via firewire. This has 16:9 mode but this is the first time I have attempted to use it. I also have Adobe Premiere Elements 2 which I got bundled in when I bought Photoshop Elements 6 a year ago. I have not used Premiere before.
With Ulead with project settings in 16: 9 mode the resultant DVD gave a display on my LCD TV of a 4:3 pillar box with a 16:9 display within it. Ok I could expand this using the controls of the TV but not ideal!
I then found that if I left the project settings to 4:3 but changed the burn settings to 16:9 I got a DVD that showed a full width picture on the LCD but this was still letterboxed within what was now a 16:9 display . I still had black bands top and bottom and everybody/thing looked short and fat!
So I thought I have got to produce an anamorphic full height version of my pictures that when expanded by the widescreen flag it will fill the 16:9 display. I could find no way of doing this in Ulead v9.0 however?
So I looked at Premiere and found I could expand the picture laterally or vertically at will. After a bit of calculating I applied a 133.3% vertical expansion and lo and behold it looked like I had the basis of a picture that would deliver the goods if expanded by a widescreen flag. Hoorah! However I could find no way of setting a widescreen flag to burn in Premiere so I exported the modified movie as .avi and imported it into Ulead as a 4:3 project added a title screen etc and burnt to DVD with 16:9 set in the burn conditions.
Ive got a DVD now that automatically plays as full widescreen.
The problem is that I seem to have lost a fair bit of picture quality in the process which I assume is down to the expansion and re-coding to .avi?
Whilst I am contemplating buying a new HD camcorder it strikes me that upgrading later versions of one or the other of my software packages may perform this task more efficiently or have I missed something in my current versions. I would greatly appreciate any comments that would enable me to produce a better quality widescreen DVD from the original DV footage.
Many thanks in anticipation.