The word crop was brought by the OP and I was taking his word for it that his DVD recorder and his capture cards do capture full 720 and crop to about 704 and rescale that back to 720, Didn't make sense to me, so you should address your message to the OP not me. Also the link you posted used the word crop:
I know my capture devices don't do that, They spit out the 720 as it was sampled. The point I was trying to make is summarized in that PDF file.

What you're saying here is close enough, up until the bolded part. He never claimed that the DMR-ES10 704 centre-crop is resized up to 720. Blanking is just added to either side.

Most capture devices these days do what you said that all devices do. Meaning: if more modes than 720 are offered, then 704 is a centre crop, and 640 square pixel mode is a resized version of 704.

---

I do have a question for Bogilein or anyone else with a Panasonic DMR who can test:

DVD recordings made with DMR-ES10 are 704x576? Or they're 720x576 with "crop + padding" just like the analog outputs?

This German thread here says the ES15 doesn't crop the picture while the ES10 does: http://www.hifi-forum.de/viewthread-109-14308.html


The faulty EH55 I have definitively crops the picture like the ES10, and recording on the internal HDD produces a 704x576 file. Does anyone here own an ES15 and a PAL source?

Edit: the thread also mentions that new models with HDMI out like the EH65 use the same internal TBC as the ES15. Is that true? In that case I'd go full HDMI.

So what that's saying is that the PAL DMR-ES15 digitizes internally at 720x576. But per Bogilein above, the analog output will still be masked.

Yes; this is well-known on Gleitz forum.

I have been testing an ES10 I purchased for the last week and also noticed this resolution in the video - cropping of the edges isn't so much a problem for me, but what made me notice this is the image is very slightly squished in the AR because of how it sizes the frame.

I tested the same movie on 2 different recorders, the other recorder outputs 720x480 and does not crop anything - in this recorder the image looks as it should, not squashed. The ES10 recording at 704x480 is slightly squashed - I probably wouldn't have consciously realized it if I wasn't directly comparing the two recordings, but its definitely noticeable.

Can you post 1:1 frame grabs (no resize)? It sounds like you're applying 4:3 Display Aspect Ratio to both rather than the correct Sample Aspect Ratio.

I'll post a couple screenshots a bit later when I'm able to.

I'm not applying anything, its the recorder setting the AR. The ES10 outputs a 4:3 AR and unless I'm missing some setting, there isn't any way to change that. I can of course alter the AR with software, but I'm just talking about what the ES10 outputs on its own

So, if I record on HDD or DVD using the EH55, would I get no 704 padding? I already record in mpeg2 so it wouldn’t make a difference.

I haven’t tested it yet. I need to recap it anyway.

When I record on DVD with the ES10 it records in 704.

It took a little time because I created new test files.

The player of the test file was always the Pioneer DVD recorder DVR-630.

Unfortunately, I have the Panasonic ES15 just not here so I have used the following DVD recorder:

Panasonic DMR-HS2 (2002)
Panasonic DMR-ES10 (2005)
Panasonic DMR-EX77 (2007)

I recorded on DVD or the HDD.
Then I recorded the file in passthrough mode via the S-Video output with the CanopusNX.

Furthermore I capured the test file with an ATI AIW9600Pro once with the resolution 704x576i and 720x576i.

I also recorded the test file on a SVHS cassette with the Philips VR1500 (similar to JVC HR-S8600) and played the cassette with the Philips with and without TBC and capured the file with the Canopus NX.

In addition, I also used the Philips in passthrough mode.

I don't think it's a good idea to start from a digital still and label it full 720 pixels. The ideal test is to use a camcorder shooting a test card and adjust the borders while connecting to a studio monitor that has split frame to see the entire frame borders and zoom in or out, move left or right to make sure the test card borders are right where the active area should be, Another way is using a capture device that doesn't crop, resize or blank over the active area to adjust the camcorder frame borders, record a short video on tape, recheck the tape by playing it back on the same monitoring conditions to make sure the recording doesn't alter the frame borders and capture the tape with the capture cards to be tested.

If you must record a digital still to the VCR don't label it anything, just record on a VHS tape a digital card with coaxial circles labeled 0 to X from the center out and capture the tape with those devices, What if the VCR has some sort of cropping when recording a tape, labeling 720 makes you think the capture card on test cropped it but it is actually the VCR that did that.

Also using a pre-recorded VHS tape such as a movie and compare the capture cards frames is a good way too.