Tranfering recordings from a cable company's dvr to pc.

[Gerlinde]

We have a HDTV and a dvr with our cable service. The cable company allows you to transfer recordings to a vcr for later watching. Of course once you transfer the recordings they are not in HD anymore. That is not a problem, because it still looks very nice.

Since I don't have a vcr anymore, I have been using the pass-trough feature of me HV30 to capture the footage via firewire to my notebook. I use PE to capture and then cut out all the commercials too, if there are any. The thing that puzzles me is the aspect ratio of the recordings.

I assumed, when the original program is in 1080i 16:9 widescreen format, it should be still in widescreen format after down conversion to SD video. For that reason I chose a SD widescreen preset in PE for capturing. To my surprise, the footage has a red line after capturing and is actually in SD 4:3 format with black stripes on top and bottom. The only way to get rid of the black bands is to scale to 135%. Am I missing something here or is that how it is? I was wondering if there are any settings for the HV30 that need to be changed. I read the manual from front to back, but could not find anything. It seems to be all automatic.

[Bobby]

In the Edit pane, right click on all the clips and select Interpret Footage. Then pick the correct aspect ratio (I am not home, so can't get on PRE myself to guide further). Sometimes you have to do this.

[Gerlinde]

Hi Bobby, thanks for your response. Unfortunately, that does not help. This was the first thing I tried. No matter which setting I use, it will not get rid of the black bars. I can later supply some screen shots. I have to go to work now. The only way I can do it is by scaling it bigger and loose some of the resolution.

[Chuck Engels]

If you want to pass through the HV30 to a standard definition project the HV30 would need to be set to DV LOCK for standard definition capture. Otherwise I would suggest capturing to a HDV preset 1080i 30, and downconvert when you export instead of on capture

[Gerlinde]

Chuck, I believe that's what I'm doing. The Cable company does not let you record anything in HD that comes out of the DVR. The DVR outputs a analog signal, it is already down converted to SD.

[Bobby]

It sounds like the DVR is inserting the black sidebars. What they seem to be generating is a fullscreen (4:3) presentation with a widescreen video image inside of it. If that is the case, the only way you can get rid of the bars is to zoom in as you have. This quality will be... well... what it is.