widescreen? why not HD? I guess I dont get it. I need this to look great on a big plasma monitor.

all i know is they told me "images have to all be 16:9" and they are using the Sony 42" PFM Plasma. I have to make a great looking 16:9 trailer from regular DV footage.

If your footage is only DV25 to start with there's not much you can do to make it HD, what wasn't there cannot be added.
That said UNLESS they've got a way to playout HD it's all rather irrelevant anyway and is the display device capable of HD?

Lets assume it is, here's an idea. Let's assume they can hook it up to a decent PC say via DVI. You could do a 720p project in Vegas. Now you're DV25 footage is going to look a bit sad, so keep it letterboxed to native 720x576, but you can add stills from a good digital still camera, you can have two windows of DV25, you can add graphics and text all within the HD frame. If you don't upscale anything it will not look so bad.
Now render it all out to WM9 at 720p (at as higher a bitrate as the PC can cope with) and you have HD on a very limited budget.

Bob.

I think you are talking about what i wanted to try, however, there will be no PC just a DVD player.

This is what the client said

"The display has a Sony DVD player along with a SRP-X700P powered AV mixer and a 42” PFM Plasma. The DVD should be 16 x 9 aspect ratio (The 42” PFM looks best with 16 x 9 images)"

So I was going to try a VV HD 720-30p (1280x720, 29.970 fps) and use multiple 4:3 clips plus graphics.

then render to mpeg and burn to DVD....will this work??

Spot,

I would really appreciate the brief tutorial there. One thing I'm still confused here is if our source is 4:3 and make it to 16:9 from Vegas properties, isn't it going to stretch the picture horizontally? Or is V5 smart enough to resample the image?

As far as I understand it, when one uses "Letterbox" it is exactly that. It is a "F"rame mask that obscures anything that is not within the view of the . .er . .letterbox . .Think of the time when you would look through a "landscape" letterbox [LB], trying to get the attention of your friend inside. Everything that was not "in view" would be cropped. That's what I understand happens with LB. And yes, that which you thought would be nice within in frame would be cut off - so no deformation . . just not there! Now, on my XM2 I do have 16:9 Guide lines on the Eyepiece and LCD screen. I could use these lines to "frame" the shot .. so, that when I would bring this into Vegas the LB would then neatly "cut" that which I didn't want. Ok . .I think I got it right so far. This is all to do with the simplest version of 4:3 being framed using 16:9 and then LB-ed by the 16:9 LB . . .

Now, some camcorders that capture in 4:3 can also digitally squish vertically SO THAT when this , in turn, is then captured into Vegas this can then be DE-SQUISHED into a virtual 16:9. It wasn't optically filmed in 16:9 - more of that in a minute - it was filmed in 4:3 BUT digitally manipulated to then have a format ready for capture into V5 for 16:9. And yes quality will suffer .. I don't know how much and I don't know the rules and regulations on all of this . . I haven't done any of this yet . .except experiments. Ok, have I lost you yet? . . No? Then I'll keep going . . . Using a 4:3 camcorder I could purchase a lens that would optically squish the incoming image to create 16:9 .. so I now have a 16:9 lens - a lump of glass in front of another lump of glass NOT a good idea - to get a 16:9 image into the camera .. phhoarrghh . .this is really hard going ! . . . so all this creates a loss of quality and a loss of optical options .. I wont even go near Zooming .. that's another thing . . yeah?

So all this points to : If yah wanna 16:9? The get/have a 16:9 camera to do it. Do I believe this? .. Having NOT done tests to bear this out I can't say. I have read some very positive feedback with guys who HAVE used 16:9 on the Canon XM2 - a 4:3 camcorder - and are very pleased with it.

So, if filming in 4:3 and transporting to any method to get 16:9 within Vegas, something, as they say, will be lost in conversion. If you frame to fit 16:9 with guidelines then the areas "outside" the 16:9 guides will not be there and you will have needed to use ONLY that part of the CCD array that would be within it. So, for example , you would have to be very hard on yourself to ignore that which was OUTSIDE the guides and literally focus on that which is WITHIN the thin horizontal strip, that is 16:9 .. Some guys have gone to the length of fixing "safe" and safe/camcorder kind physical paper or cardboard mask to the LCD viewfinder so that they are oblivious to the rest of the screen - yeah? BUT the biggest thing I keep forgetting is that the 4:3 CCD array is optimized for, well, 4:3 capture and quality and capture - yeah? Only "using that thin strip through the middle is not what, in my case, Canon had thought when they designed the camera . . but I could be very well incorrect . .

So, anything that aint digitally manipulated to give 16:9 will give a better QUALITY than that which has been digitally manipulated to give an appearance of 16:9. That which wont "fit" into the thin strip called 16:9, will be cutaway - that means it wont be distorted but cut. BUT, and here's the killer, Vegas CAN distort to get 16:9 too! This means that how you actually captured the original footage WILL determine HOW you will see it within Vegas and thence HOW you will decide to use whatever 16:9 manipulation for Vegas . .. NOW, I may have some of this wrong .. I guess I'll get hammered by Bob or SPOT on this . . I can take it and look forward to be . .er . . rectified!

Somebody will throw in stuff about lenses and cylindrical lenses for the viewfinder and things . . watch out!

You are right to ask the question. You may now see there are many ways to "skin" this particular feline . . . I need to lay down with in a dark room with a strong coffee . .

Best regards,

Grazie

Grazie,
I guess you're right, adding more glass isn't the best way to get a good image to the CCDs. However it's better than throwing away around 30% of the data that the CCDs recorded.
You are right also putting a hunk of glass on the front of a zoom can impact on things like back focus, only an issue if you trying to zoom in on a shot. I'd heard a lot of negatives about this until I was told that it's not such a big deal if you know what's going to happen. The latest 16:9 adaptor from Century Optics I'm told fixes this problem. Still damn expensive and on almost all cameras you have to put up with a squished image in the viewfinder.
Anyway Sony have given us a nice solution to the problem and it'll even shoot pretty decent HD!
Looks to me like this camera is going to make a lot of things obsolete.

Depending on what you're shooting though I kind of like the idea of putting a 4:3 frame inside a 16:9 one, you can use the rest of the frame for other things. Another common trick is to have one track with the cropped 4:3 image filling the frame but with heavy blur and then composite the 4:3 over that, looks much better than having black bars down the sides.

Bob.