transferring from miniDV

[djs]

I have some miniDV tapes that have been shot on a widescreen camera (professional videographer).

I now need to transfer them to my computer for editing but my miniDV camera does not shoot in widescreen.

Will this pose any problem when I try to transfer the data from tatpe to PC through this video camera. The camera is a Panasonic NV-GS50.

Thanks.

[ballbelter]

I should imagine that it will just play them back in a 4:3 format.
Best just to capture 1 minute of the film and see what sort of output you get.

[ingxen]

Not sure if this will work but if your camera has a firewire connection, buy/borrow a firewire card and cable for your PC if it doesn't already have one and transfer using that as it is a digital rather than using the analogue outputs so the camera doesn't have to convert the signal to analogue first then back to digital on the computer. If you use firewire it might not change aspect etc when transfering. Try playing the movie on the camera and see if it appears in widescreen on the camera screen.

I transfered home movies from miniDV camera to PC about 4-5 years back using that method and some PC video editing software (can't remember what the software was) to control the miniDV camera and it worked well for me but they were not in widescreen. Give it a try like ballbelter suggested and see what happens.

[djs]

thanks for the advice guys. Will give it a zap. Forgot to mention that I will be using FireWire direct to computer.

[adam]

or you could pay to have it done. i could do it for you. typical price is around $10 a tape.
cheers

[Adobe]

when you capture the files in premier pro just set it to widscreen and you'll be fine. But the tapes may have been recording in DVCAM format which a home consumer camera will not play.

Adobe.

[dtvone]

Actually 4X3 & 16X9 SD normally have the same number of pixels across the screen, being 720 pixels across by 576 lines. The shape of the pixels is different between 16x9 and 4x3. So 16x9 is referred to as being anamorphic due to changed shape of the pixels..

see

for more details

[djs]

Thanks for the advice guys. it turned out that my camera was able to do the job.