I want to bring everyone up-to-date on my problem. The black bands were apparently caused by having the camera set for 16:9 aspect ratio and PowerDirector set for 4:3 (my bad). With that fixed I get a full 1440 X 1080 snapshot after capture (distorted) and a full 1920 X 1080 snapshot after production (not distorted). My concern now is that I've lost definition (500,000 pixels) during capture that is repaired by up-converting the horizontal lines from 1440 to 1920 during production. I'm thinking the up-conversion doesn't restore the lost pixels, but caculates new ones. So, the lost definition is not really restored.

I'm getting the feeling I'm talking to myself

What I think may be happening is that the camera is producing video in HD MPEG2 (1920 X 1080) and PowerDirector is converting it to HDV (1440 X 1080) during capture. During rendering, PowerDirector, converts the video back to HD MPEG2.

If I could change capture mode from HDV to HD MPEG2 I think it would work correctly. However, I don't see any way to do that.

Let me try again. I'm thinking now this is not a PowerDirector problem and will not be fixed by using any other editor.

The distinction I should have made above is between HD (16:9, 1920 X 1080) and HDV (1440 X 1080). The 'problem' occurs when the video is converted to HDV in the camera for storage on the tape. Snapshots in the camera are not stored on tape and not converted to HDV. They are stored on a memory card. Therefore, they come out in HD format if 16:9 is selected. As a result, the problem of down-converting the frames from 1920 to 1440 is an attribute of HDV and must be corrected by up-converting the 1440 lines to 1920 when rendering the video to HD for viewing.

Van Hee,

Just to say I have been reading your posting and found them to be interesting. Please keep us informed as to what you find and results etc.

Thank you... I appreciate each bit you post.

Dafydd