Selecting the Video Quality

Changing the Aspect Ratio of the

(Recording Mode)

Recordings (Widescreen / 4:3)

The camcorder offers 3 recording modes. Changing the recording mode will change the recording time available on the disc. Select XP mode for better movie quality; select LP mode for longer recording times.

The following table gives approximate recording times with a brand new DVD disc (on a single recording side).

 Default value

 

Disc type

 

Recording mode

 

 

DVD-R,

DVD-R DL

 

 

DVD-RW

 

 

 

 

 

 

20 min.

36 min.

 

 

 



30 min.

54 min.

 

 

 

 

 

60 min.

108 min.

 

 

 

( 21)

FUNC.

[ STANDARD PLAY 6 Mbps] Desired recording mode

FUNC.

NOTES

•In LP mode, recordings are more liable to be affected by imperfections of the disc used or recording conditions and you may experience some anomalies (blocky video artifacts, banding, skipping audio, etc.) during playback. We recommend using XP or SP mode for important recordings.

•The camcorder uses a variable bit rate (VBR) to encode video so the actual recording times will vary depending on the content of the scenes.

The default aspect ratio of movies is 16:9 (widescreen). Follow the procedure below to change it to 4:3.

( 21)

FUNC.

[ MENU]

[ CAMERA SETUP]

[WIDESCREEN] [ OFF]

FUNC.

NOTES

•Playing back a widescreen recording: TV sets compatible with the Video ID-1 system will switch automatically to 16:9 mode. Otherwise, change the aspect ratio of the TV manually.

•To play back on a TV with normal aspect ratio (4:3) change the [TV TYPE] setting

accordingly ( 72).

Zooming: Optical, Advanced and Digital Zoom

The camcorder offers three types of zoom when recording movies: optical, advanced and digital zoom (In mode, only the optical zoom is available.) You can also change the zoom speed.

30 • Video