GUIDE · 4 MIN READ
Sony VX1000 and VX2100 footage in 50p: keep the skate-video look
The Sony VX1000, and later the VX2000 and VX2100, filmed a huge share of 90s and 2000s skate videos, usually with a fisheye on the front. Part of that look is the motion: on a TV it was smooth and immediate, nothing like the stutter of film. Converted badly, your clips lose exactly that.
Why VX footage looks choppy online
The VX cameras record interlaced MiniDV: 50 fields a second in PAL, about 60 in NTSC. Most converters and editing apps turn that into 25 frames a second (30 for NTSC), either by blending fields or dropping half of them. A kickflip that was 50 moments a second becomes 25. That's the difference between "looks like the video" and "looks like a phone recording of a TV". Why it happens is explained in Why old camcorder footage has jagged lines.
How to keep the look
Keep every field
Deinterlace to 50p (60p for NTSC) so all the motion the camera caught stays in.
Keep it 4:3
Don't stretch or crop to 16:9. The fisheye circle and the framing are part of the look.
Nothing fake
Skip AI upscaling and heavy sharpening. Standard definition looks right at its real size.
Square pixels, the right shape
DV stores 720×576 (PAL) or 720×480 (NTSC) with pixels that aren't square. Shown without correction, PAL footage looks slightly squeezed and NTSC footage slightly stretched. Resizing to 768×576 (or 640×480) with square pixels gives the true 4:3 shape on any screen.
Sharing it
YouTube plays 50p and 60p at full smoothness. On apps that use a vertical or square frame, put the 4:3 clip inside the frame rather than cropping into it, or you lose the edges of the fisheye.
Editing VX footage
If you're cutting a part or a full video, edit on a 50p timeline (60p for NTSC) using the 50p files, and export at the same rate. Mixing in a 25p timeline throws away half the motion again.
dv2mp4 converts VX tapes this way by default: 50p, 768×576 square pixels, untouched 4:3 framing and clean 48 kHz audio.