Squashed Video

I'm brand new to iMovie. The reason being is that, believe it or not, i've only just got my first Video Camera!! Never really had a need for one until now.
Anyway, the problem i'm having is regarding the video format. My Camera is recording in 16:9, but when I pull this into iMovie, it seem to 'squash' it up. The best way a can describe it is when you have a movie thats in letterbox mode and you force it into full screen, the image looks stretched vertically.
I'm sure that its something simple with me beeing a noob, but can anyone tell me how to stop that happening?
Thanks!
Dean

I can confirm this problem too, and I've done a bit of experimenting, too. I've also tried using Windows Live Movie Maker and it's the same issue on the Windows side, too. Compared to a JVC Everio (which records to a hard drive using mpeg2), the Everio works perfectly: widescreen/standard--both are interpreted correctly by both iMovie and WLMM.
It appears to be an issue with the camcorder not handling aspect ratio properly.
http://gdgt.com/samsung/sc-mx20/review/1v9/
Looks like your only choice is to pretty much re-encode the video before you load it into iMovie. MPEG Streamclip is recommended.

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