2-Cam Mix : 1 Cam 4:3 + 1 Cam 16:9

[hellawaits77]

I'm doing a 2-cam mix, consisting of one of my masters which is 4:3 and another filmers' which is 16:9. Would it be better to render the mix to 4:3 or 16:9? I've rendered a show I shot in 16:9 to 4:3 unintentionally, and it didn't turn out bad. Not sure if 16:9 to 4:3 is better or vice versa.

Also, my source (4:3) is filmed from further away than the other source, if that makes a differece. Any info/opinions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks

[Metfan72]

Well Nick, I am only going to give my opinion, but 16:9 is much better than 4:3. Some may disagree with that, but most new HDTV's are made with the intent of watching movies in Widescreen, which is 16:9.

4:3 still has it's advantage in that it is widely and commonly used and is easy to work on, but 16:9 is a much better, clearer picture. I think your cam being further away will have a better picture in widescreen as opposed to Fullscreen.

Hope that helps.

[Pete-Rock]

It is a decision between cutting away top and bottom of your recording or cutting left and right side from the 16:9 recording. So I'd say it depends on the recordings which one to cut, maybe you can try both ways for just one or two minutes of each just to see what works better.

[leomet_2000]

4:3 converted to 16:9 sucks.... but 16:9 to 4:3 is a lot easied and not deformed to make a cam mix.... i had the same problem and i use all in 4:3... it not you will be having 1 of those cam with bad picture...

[TayfunRaider]

When I authored my Istanbul recording, I had to replace some parts with 4:3 clips.
So main source was in 16:9 and clips were in 4:3 = Mixed formats. Made it with DVD-Lab Pro.
May be you like to do it like that.

[TayfunRaider]

↑↑↑ Yeah that's much more reasonable like StageFrightLive said.
You are apparently going to use the two sources nearly the same amount.
So constant changes in format will make it an unwatchable show apparently.

[hellawaits77]

Thanks for all your input. What I think I will do is mix it in 4:3. I think I'll try cropping the 16:9 to 4:3 and see how that looks. If that's not good then I'll just do a "test" mix a few minutes long to see how it looks in 4:3.

[maidencolorado]

I know I'm chiming in a little late, here Nick. Alex and I had a mix of 4:3 and 16:9 for a couple of shows we shot together. Granted, they were 6 cam mixes, so we weren't as heavily reliant on any one cam. We were shooting in 16:9 for the cams we were moving around and zooming, the rest were static, 2 in 4:3, 2 in 16:9. Obviously, we cropped the 4:3 footage to 16:9. On the one closer to the stage, it worked well. On the one furthest from the stage, the footage came out pixelated when it wasn't before we cropped it. We used Vegas to do the formatting and mixing.

As said above, probably best to give the footage a good watch, see if there's more spare room at the top and bottom of the 4:3 or at the right and left of the 16:9. I'd tend to think that each case would be different.

[Sepu]

I was checking this thread because I'm going to have the same problem..mixing 2 different sources.
I'm agree that a 16:9 is better than a 4:3, anyway the best shot is in 4:3, so cropping the 16:9 is probably the best way.

I checked Vegas and there is a simple and interesting thing.
When you select a video in 16:9, and open the "pan/crop" panel (litte square on the right side of the video), you can do a right click on the video and select "Match Output Aspect" and it will automatically zoom at 4:3 (if you project is set up to 4:3)

So, that's really good instead of loosing your time cropping the different videos