Posted by Smarty on 07/28/07 16:27

Peter,

This is far from being a complete answer to your question, but I will quote
a summary from a series of articles in EventDV Magazine by Jan Ozer which
addresses this topic. I also encourage you to look at the entire article as
well as the EventDV website where a number of related issues regarding HDV
versus SD when authoring DVD5s are addressed.

Here is the quote:


"In the most conservative test, the results are very close. While the FX1
down-sampled image looks a bit smoother, the DV camcorder image looks a bit
sharper and clearer. In my view, however, the difference is so small that
viewers wouldn't notice the lower quality of the FX1 unless they looked at
the images side by side."

http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9491

My experience personally has been that my FX1 HDV camcorder made slightly
superior looking static images when compared to my Sony TRV900, an
excellent, older SD camera. Moving images stressed the penalty of
transcoding the HDV MPEG2 by downsampling into DVD format. I never really
did directly compare the results from the same camera when producing SD
versus HDV in producing an ultimate SD DVD5 disk, and have very little doubt
that Jan Ozer's observation for the FX-1 was essentially correct.

As I originally stated, Jan Ozer's articles and my anecdotal comments are
hardly a complete answer to your question, and there are other very
knowledgeable people here who have other experiences and opinions who will
hopefully provide a full answer to your question.

Smarty


"peter" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:ksJqi.5676$Q85.1400@trndny02...
> Let's say you are asked to taped a show and the client wants the final DVD
> (not HDDVD or blue ray, just plain old DVD) in wide 16:9 format.
>
> Would there be a noticeable difference in quality whether the camera used
> is a 4:3 camera (e.g. sony vx2100) with top and bottom chopped off, or a
> 16:9 HD camera (e.g. canon XH A1)?
>
> Since the horizontal resolution of the HDV eventually gets converted to
> 720, just like the 4:3 camera, in theory there would be no advantage in
> using the HDV camera over the 4:3 one, right? Perhaps the HDV compression
> would results in worse DVD because of the mpeg artifacts. But that's just
> in theory. Has anyone actually tried both ways?
>

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