What is the resolution of my camcorder?

SoundBox

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My Sony CCD-TR913E has a sensor of:

570,000 pixels (effective 360,000 pixels)

and what I am trying to work out is how many lines resolution is that. The camera outputs 4:3 or 16:9 'full' which seems to give the same picture height as 4:3 but more width. Some effects are disabled in 16:9 full.

Also it is marketed as being Hi8 XR (extended resolution). What process makes for the XR feature?

Thank you for any help.
 
You can't use the pixel count to calculate video resolution. The camcorder you describe uses the Hi8 format, which was specified as having a resolution of 420 horizontal lines.
If you are considering capturing and digitising your footage, select a resolution of 720 x 576 for PAL video, to get the best quality from your footage.

The 'full' 16 x9 format (i.e.the one without the black bars!) uses an anamorphic process to 'squash' the footage hotzontally. This was intended for use with the older type CRT TV with a 16x9 viewing option.
Again, if you are intending to digitise your 16x9 'full' footage, the simplest way to ensure correct display on a computer screen -or a modern TV -would be to resize the 720 x576 captured footage, to 1024 x576.
Really depends on what you are trying to achieve from your old footage?.....
 
Thanks rogs.

The reason I ask is that I don't feel that the camera outputs results that quite meet the 400-420 lines spec - it is always a little mushy on the fine detail. Certainly a S-VHS tape from an HD source seems sharper. I was wondering if the sensor was the bottleneck in the chain that holds back the fine detail but I could not work out the maths as I don't know how many vertical lines the camera outputs. I can only guess at the horizontal being 'around 400'.
 
For what its worth back in the analogue days no cam or format seemed to give the same resolution for me,for instance my SVHS and SVHSC cams never seemed to have as much resolution as when i connected them to my main SVHS video recorder with leads.
 
I have just uploaded a clip to YouTube and looking at the whole image without CRT overscan I think that the lens may be de-centered a touch as I can see the edge of my filter on one side only. That would account for some softness I think. As I have never used a filter before I have not seen this effect. If it is a fault I will be rather disappointed as the camera was expensive.

 

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