anamorphic widescreen dvd with movie studio? (SOLVED)

allyn wrote on 1/3/2004, 1:59 PM
(still using movie studio 3.0a trial).

i shoot in 16:9 anamorphic mode with my digital camcorder. i was surpried the first time i captured clips that movie studio knew the footage was 16:9.

i want to make anamorphic dvds from the footage. i see widescreen templates all over the place in movie studio (e.g., in project properties, pan/crop presets). if i change the project propertes from regular dv to widescreen dv, the preview window switches from letterboxed to anamorphic. this makes me think this will work.

but i see other postings in this forum that make it sound like it doesn't work correctly.

does anybody know? i'd like to understand this before i buy movie studio, because if it can't do anamorphic, it won't help me and i'll have to look elsewhere. from the editing standpoint, movie studio looks great.

thanks.
allyn fratkin
escondido, ca

Comments

allyn wrote on 1/4/2004, 11:47 AM
ok, i ended up buying movie studio yesterday and here is what i've found (and i'm a little ticked off about it).

executive summary:
1. movie studio could create widescreen anamorphic 16:9 dvds if it was allowed to.
2. it isn't allowed to, because of a political/marketing decision.

longer explanation:
movie studio contains widescreen templates all over the place. using these, it is possible to edit a widescreen project that looks great.

the problem comes at rendering time. if you allow mydvd to render to mpeg-2 you get the wrong thing (you get an anamorphically squeezed dvd without the anamorphic setting to make it play properly). so you can try to render in movie studio directly to mpeg-2 with the mainconcept encoder. there are templates there too. with names like "DVD NTSC". and there's even one called "DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream". if you choose this you get a widescreen mpeg-2 that works perfectly and if you author a dvd with mydvd it even creates a proper anamorphic dvd. but the audio is not included in the output (that's what the "video stream" means in the template name). but there's no template for "DVD NTSC Widescreen" that includes audio. this is either a big oversight or a marketing/political decision.

this puts us right back at the workflow suggested by Aylwin in this message (use an external MPEG-2 decoder):
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=219676

another alternative i just thought about is a program to tweak the MPEG-2 file header to set whatever settings need to be set to tell mydvd that the file is supposed to be widescreen. does anybody know anything about that?

thanks.
allyn fratkin
escondido, ca
allyn wrote on 1/4/2004, 12:28 PM
good news, everyone!

i began to suspect that the only difference between a widescreen mpeg-2 and a 4:3 one was an option in the mpeg header.

this turned out to be true, i found a free tool at dvdrhelp.com that allows patching of the mpeg file header to change the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9. this seems to be the only difference between using the regular template and the widescreen template.

the FREE tool is called dvdpatcher and is fairly easy to use (though it could be a little easier).
i downloaded dvdpatcher from http://mitglied.lycos.de/dvdpatcher/

open dvdpatcher and load the mpg you want to tweak. then just replicate the settings from the top pane into the radio buttons below (a shame the settings aren't already populated), making sure to set 16:9 mode and "patch all headers". then click "Patch now!". verify settings, and press "Start".

that's it. you now have a widescreen MPEG-2 file that can be written to a DVD. Even MyDVD gets this right. It will set the correct anamorphic bit on the DVD so the DVD will be letterboxed on 4:3 televisions and widescreen on 16:9 televisions. The menus may be stretched but I can live with that.

what a relief!
mmreed wrote on 1/4/2004, 1:05 PM
Make certain to voice your wishes for updates at:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/support/productsuggestion.asp

I often enter requests a few times - just to make certain the get the hint <grin>