Capture trouble

Hi all, I'm having some capture trouble with a camera that doesn't belong to me.

I'm trying to capture video shot on a Panasonic DVX 100B. It's not my camera, and I have to capture it and give it back.

The video looks fantastic on the camera's display, and on the Log and Capture window. However, when I begin capturing and the new window opens, it looks jaggy and interlaced, and stretched out. The captured video looks bad as well.

I am using the easy setup DV/Panasonic DVC Pro. I tried DV-NTSC and I tried DV-NTSC Anamorphic (the latter look horrible)

Is it something obvious I'm doing wrong?

If my memory serves me right the good old DVX 100 has a funny way of recording 16:9. It simply puts bars on top and bottom of a 4:3 sensor and this gives you that fake widescreen look. 16:9 footage from the 100 is NOT anamorphic. That's why you see the stretching of the picture when you capture this footage as anamorphic, while the black bars remain top and bottom . It indeed looks horrible.

The only way I recall working with this peculiar "widescreen" footage is to capture it as 4:3 and create a 16:9 sequence. When in the timeline the clips will appear as 4:3 with black bars on top and bottom. Then you scale the clips up (I think I you should scale up to 1.33) to fit the 4:3 video in the widescreen frame and get rid of the bars. You lose some quality caused by the scaling, but the video will not look distorted anymore.

Best wishes,

Ronny

As always Ronny, thanks for your sage advise.

The 4:3 sequence certainly took care of the odd stretching. Your memory was "dead on" with the scaling up. 133% was right on the mark.

Didn't do any favors for the interlace problem. Even with a de-interlace filter on it, it still looks jaggy.

... or perhaps I've gotten spoiled with "HD footage", and that simply is the nature of this footage.

Yes I can see it. Terrible.

But wait, set your Canvas size to 100% instead of 99%. Do you still see the jagged edges?

If not this is a scaling problem but it won't affect your final output.

If you do, try setting the field dominance of your sequence to None.

Best wishes,

Ronny

OH ... MY ... GOSH. Haha. I NEVER noticed that. Yes, the problem vanished.

I wish I could sit in the chair next to you for a week and just soak up the (sometimes simple) knowledge.

Thanks again.

You are always welcome.

Best wishes,

Ronny