What res does Hollywood DV cams film/record at? If hollywood needs to crop?

[BITS]

i remember reading alot of material before DV or anything digital came to mainstream. They always seemed to state atleast one thing over and over, that the final production you get to see, was just a little square of the film. I always took it as it means that the film has much more to see, they just crop it out.

So, assuming this is partially correct in anyway, if the new digital camcorders film at 1080p, then what do they do if they want to crop? Cropping would drop it from 1080 to some lower number, thus not giving true HD. From all the camera specs i see on BH Photo they all seem to do 1080, so does this mean that Hollywood does not crop at all anymore in order to stay true to HD? Or do certain cams getting modded to allow a higher res to allow for cropping? It seems like HD post production suicide to record at just 1080.

[chadamir]

Take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_matte

[BITS]

Right, that's it, that's what i'm remembering. Now, what does a HD cam look like in that regard? And what outside of the boxes for HD cams?

Hold on, in that wikipedia article it is saying that 4:3 is superior to 16:9 for area of picture? it shows that a 4:3 picture, based upon it's example, will have much more viewable area.

[foxyshadis]

There's a mention of certain specs here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=898961#post898961

Although without a list of which cameras meet it.

[zambelli]

Most Hollywood films that have thus far been shot on HD (i.e. Sin City, new Star Wars, Superman Returns) have used the Sony CineAlta HDCAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CineAlta)series. In all cases the films were transferred from HD to film for theatrical distribution, either in "flat" 1.85:1 AR or "scope" 2.35:1 AR.