What you see is what you get on viewfinder?

[CycleWriter]

Still haven't learned how to search or look through the Stickies first, I see. Thread moved.

What do you mean by capture a movie with Media Player classic? Media player is just that, a player. It does not capture video, only play it back.

[Janke]

I noticed that what we see on the screen is not the full image. There are some space missing on each side. Why?

Because Canon designed it so - TVs do cut off some of the image too, so it's a precaution, kinda...

However, for exacting work, it's a PITA!

Here's the actual cutoff:

[Gojaya]

Still haven't learned how to search or look through the Stickies first, I see. Thread moved.

What do you mean by capture a movie with Media Player classic? Media player is just that, a player. It does not capture video, only play it back.

English is not my native language, "What you see is what you get on viewfinder?" was ans is still not related to my question in my mind. If you read my message again you will see that i talked about capture PICTURE of the movie, not a movie... Just press ALT+I and that's it. If you have an HV cam, try it with one of your record, then you'll see the problem.

[Janke]

is still not related to my question in my mind.

This thread is related to the first part of your post, though:

I noticed that what we see on the screen is not the full image. There are some space missing on each side. Why?

[Gojaya]

Is it funny to erase my post without telling the supposed reason?

[CycleWriter]

I don't need a reason, but since you asked, they were of no value to the thread. Much like your last post.

[Gojaya]

Yeah of course, you don't need a reason since you're an lalalalalalala. But i think one of the 24.000 other member could have helped with the problem since i explained precisely.

[mikecazzx]

The LCD is USELESS for everything except framing (even then not so good). It helps to have an external monitor like a notebook with firewire to view how your lighting/color will look.

You have to calibrate your video monitor too to a gamma of 2.2 or so to see how it really looks. By now I can mostly tell the difference between the LCD and real footage.

On indoor shoots an external monitor is a MUST, sorry. What you see is definitely not what you get.

Is 2.2 the NSTC or similar standard? Meaning if I use an LCD monitor and the Colorvision Spyder 2 or similar is that an excepted standard? I am new to this and trying to get the monitor/LCD and output "similar" as far a brightness etc.

[NextGen]

So, as a new owner of the HV30, and a video/audiophile, I wish I had known about the LCD issue before I decided to get this camcorder. IMO, under no circumstance should any display have more than 1% of over-scan. My calibrated Sony 34xs955 CRT doesn't have it (maybe 1.5%), and neither does my Sony 24FW900.

This gives me 5 solutions I can think of.

1. External monitor
2. Try to calibrate the built-in LCD
(perhaps with a hardware mod or wait for a firmware hack)
3. Simply crop your finished footage.
4. Add a percentage of black bars.
5. A combination of #3 and #4

As for now I'll probably just do solution #3 and crop since my stuff will either be for the web or DVD. I'd imagine even at 720p the detail loss wouldn't be too significant.

And as for the terrible gamma/brightness/whatever of the LCD.

On my HV30 there is a brightness adjustment menu for the LCD. What I did was adjusted the displays brightness until I could see all the different gray-scale markings on the bottom of the display (which is about the lamest calibration I've seen on any display). I ended up ticking the brightness down about 15 ticks from the middle. It's helped a bit but, I still don't trust the LCD at all. For the record I have a older Canon SD camcorder and it's display is pretty much spot on out of the box.

According to the manual you can take a picture while filming and you can even take a picture of a playback frame after filming. I've tried both and for some reason I can't view a picture I've taken while playing back tape. I am able to look at a picture I've taken while filming. The nice thing about this is I can record 10 seconds or less of test footage, and snap a few pics at the same time, then switch to play mode and view the histogram data of the pics I captured.

I originally came in here to figure out why the LCD has terrible over-scan and levels and I thought I'd share my 2 cents on what I gathered from this thread and elsewhere. I'm a newb so take it all with a grain of salt.

[azmyth]

so, is there anything we can do in post to lighten up footage without causing grain?
It looked perfect on the LCD.. but some stuff is not visible at all on my pc monitor, that I can see clearly on the lcd...

[cgbier]

Did you check a second monitor? Maybe your PC is just too dark?
If you have clean footage you can lift up the gamma to an extend without adding too much grain.

[azmyth]

i'm gonna check it on my HD tv tomorrow. I do remember some of it being dark on there too, but i just opened up a clip in vegas and slightly upped the gain... like a smidgeon.. and that did wonders, and from what I can see there is no grain.. or if there is, its very little.

[Lou van Wijhe]

If your shadows are too dark you could also take a look at the Fill Light FX in Vegas.

Lou

[mjscox]

Another thing to note is that the coverage of the LCD finder (and, presumably, the viewfinder) is not 100%. In fact if you line up something along, for instance, the bottom of the frame, shoot it, and play it back, you'll be surprised at how much more you have shot than you thought. This may be a "safety" feature but it means for accurate framing of specific things you will have to learn exactly how your particular model frames in the monitor vs. what it actually shoots.

(after posting this I noticed http://www.hv20.com/showpost.php?p=263061&postcount=77 has a pretty good indication of the lcd/viewfinder cutoff)

[Janke]

Yup, I did that test because I needed to know the exact framing, in order to keep mics, lights and stands outside the picture area...