You need to be sure that your TV is set up exactly correct also. Not all TVs are set up right from the factory.

You need a good test pattern generator to see the TV aspects.

Dave T2

Tom,
make sure the DVD player is set to output to 16:9
Yes it is

Look here:
1920 / 1080 = 1.8

My TV's resolution is 1440x900
1440 / 900 = 1.6

This means, the image is stretched, because I have not managed to make the video behave like the commercial videos with a black space above and below.
And my circle is not perfect at all. People look very tall and very slim in my videos..

You have your TV set up to FULL frame, not maintain aspect.

Dave T2

"And is my approach using pan/crop the way to go?"

NO!
You're trying to fix one error by adding another one.

I make 16:9 PAL DVDs almost exclusively. It should just work and look right. On a 16:9 TV it might be a smidge off due to the TV being not setup properly. On a LCD it should be very close to perfect.
How does it look in Vegas's preview monitor?
How perfect do you expect it to be?

There's a slight difference between HD's "16:9" and SD's "16:9". I choose to ignore it as it's so small you need a test pattern to see it.

Bob.

"This means, the image is stretched, because I have not managed to make the video behave like the commercial videos with a black space above and below."

A 16:9 DVD played back on a 16:9 monitor / TV will not have any bars, period.
A 16:9 DVD played back on a 4:3 monitor / TV will have black bars top and bottom.
Did you setup DVDA using a Widescreen template??

The DVD player is what controls what goes to the TV.
IF you setup your player correctly e.g. tell it your TV is 4:3 when it plays a 16:9 DVD it will letterboc the output. It cannot do this unless it sees the info in the DVD and you need to use the correct DVDA template to get this to work.

DO NOT TRY TO FUTZ THINGS IN VEGAS!

What will happen is your DVD will playout wrong on systems that are setup correctly. I do see a few DVDs like that!

Also do not get confused with what Hollywood does. Widescreen movies (from film) are slightly wider (1.85:1) than widescreen video. Correctly done movies will have SMALL bars top and bottom. This is in the actual video.

Bob.

Bob,
due to the TV being not setup properly
I use a Toshiba 19W300PG as my monitor. (It is the only TV I have at the moment) This TV has only a rudimentary set of options, so I find no way to tune it, more than "Wide", "4:3" and "Auto".

How does it look in Vegas's preview monitor?
Great!
I also preview it on the TV, using the TV as "Preview device". On the TV it fills the screen completely, the circle looks like an egg.

How perfect do you expect it to be?
People should look normal, my videos should not stand out as awkward. Please note - this is no nitpicking on my side, I am talking about major disproportions here.

Now I also wonder why my video do not have the black space above and below, I seem to remember I had those before when experimenting. Nevertheless, with those black spaces, it was way out of proportions then too.
I must add - commercial videos look just great, circles are circles, not ellipses.

Bob,
A 16:9 DVD played back on a 16:9 monitor / TV will not have any bars, period.
But I have a 1440x900 monitor (14.4:9)
Looking at the LCD screen on my Canon HF 10, and then on my TV, i can see with the naked eye that the aspect ratio (width / height) is different. So in my case, with my TV, I cannot with the best of my willpower see how I can "fill the screen" without circles becoming ellipses and people getting very tall and very slim - out of proportions.

Did you setup DVDA using a Widescreen template??
Yes. As a matter of fact, I played with various settings, the result viewed on my TV being the same, regardless.

IF you setup your player correctly e.g. tell it your TV is 4:3 when it plays a 16:9 DVD it will letterboc the output.
Right, I have tested this and can confirm you are right

DO NOT TRY TO FUTZ THINGS IN VEGAS!
We will see about this :-)

Correctly done movies will have SMALL bars top and bottom
And I do not understand how I can avoid doing this.

"And I do not understand how I can avoid doing this."

Here I was talking about transfers from film, film uses a variety of frame aspect ratios, one being 1.85:1 which is wider than HD. To avoid cropping the frame the image is slightly letterboxed. This has nothing directly to do with your problem directly.

Bob.

If you've got gross errors e.g. very noticeably skinny or fat people then something simple is wrong and doesn't need anything messed with in Vegas.

Now you said your TV is 14:9. That means it cannot display full frame 16:9 or 4:3 without either bars at the side (4:3) or top and bottom (16:9). Alternatively it could crop the frame. The TV itself has to do that part of the puzzle as nothing supports 14:9 as such.

What the TV should do when sent a 16:9 video is see the 16:9 flag and letterbox the 16:9 into its 14:9 display. It's the TV's job to do this, not the DVD players job. What the player has to do is send the correct flag in the video so the TV knows it's 16:9. There could be a problem here.

As I said I make a lot of 16:9 PAL DVDs. This is what I've seen work:

On my correctly setup DVD player with a 4:3 monitor the 4:3 DVDs are correct and the 16:9 DVDs get letterboxed by the player and look OK on the monitor. So far so good.

However:

On my other setup, Sony DVD player and 16:9 CRT the 16:9 flag from DVDA authored DVDs seems to be missing. I have to manually tell the TV "Hey mate, this is 16:9". All looks perfecto.

You could well have a problem if for some reason the DVDs that DVDA creates for some reason are not sending the 16:9 flag. The TV can only assume it's 4:3 and things will look badly wrong. As the TV isn't a 16:9 TV then there's no way via the TV's menu for you to get it right either.

I cannot confirm if this really is a problem with DVDA or not, I don't have the instruments to check the flags in the video stream. Some commercial DVDs don't play correctly automatically either so I really can't say with 100% certainty that DVDA is messing up or if it's my setup that's got issues. What I can say is trying to fix this by adjusting the AR in Vegas could really get things messed up. It might play right on this 14:9 TV and be a mess on other TVs.
Best case you'll be letterboxing the 16:9 into the 4:3 frame. That means throwing away a lot of resolution.

I wish I could help more here. What you're having go wrong is troubling and I've had major issues with DVDA and PAL 16:9 in other areas. I had hoped that was behind us, now thinking through your issue I'm not so certain.

I'll try to see if I can borrow a scope that does display all the flags. These things aren't cheap or common so I may have to take my kit to it. Not something I can do quickly, sorry.

Bob.

Bob,
I am almost about to print out your post and frame it :-)
This post of yours make things a lot more clear. And the problem is narrowed down.

My TV understands the DVD player. It behaves differently when I set it up as 4:3, as opposed to 16:9. And all is fine when watching commercial DVDs. BTW, on my TV the commercial [movie] DVDs have a rather large black space both above and below the image. And circles are perfect [correct width and height] in the moving pitctures themselves, the DVD menu, on the other hand, fills the entire screen real estate, and circles are distinguished ellipses.

What the player has to do is send the correct flag in the video so the TV knows it's 16:9.
Hm.. what about Vegas itself? Shouldn't Vegas send the 16:9 "flag" when I preview directly, on the "external device"? Because the same happens here, the video fills the whole screen, things get stretched / squeezed..

Thanks for your help! I will come back when I have tested more myself. I now know where to investigate.

As luck would have it I just spoke to my mate who works in broadcast. Not a top shelf guru but here is what he was able to tell me.

The flag is know as the Aspect Format Descriptor (AFD). It lives around line 1. He knows of no device / instrument that'll specifically tell you if it's set or not. However you can see it on a good monitor in underscan. It'll show up as three dots at the start of the line at the top of the screen. Not to be confused with all the other stuff that goes up the top of the frame such as closed captions etc.

This flag is very unreliable and not relied on. I do know all tape boxes from broadcasters do have bright "16:9" stickers on them where applicable. Now I know why.

This flag is not used in analog transmission, all analog is transmitted as 4:3. Any 16:9 is letterboxed. Digital transmission is all 16:9 with 4:3 pillarboxed into the frame.

One interesting comment from him about how reliable the AFD is. He has a quite nice Panny FullHD TV. It reads the flag from the DVD player the wrong way around. All 4:3 DVDs it tries to display as 16:9 etc. Thankfully his TV can be 'told' what's what but it's still a PIA.

In his view any attempts at trying to fix this other than getting a new TV will indeed lead you down a path where you'll really make a mess of things.

My suggestion. Take your DVD to retailer with a selection of TVs and DVD players. Have a look see what happens.

I still think this needs further investigation. My monitors will not underscan enough for me to see the start of the first few lines. When I get a chance I'll try a few DVDs on one that will so I can see what's happening with that flag.

The other possibility is to look at the DVD with a tool like PGC Edit. I'm no guru on that but maybe it can decode what's actually in the DVD and how it's flagged.

Bob.

In the mean time I have tested the DVD writer in Edius Neo.
Edius Neo is an NLE bundled with my Canopus 300 device. It cannot compete with Vegas in any way, but still it is a nice piece of software. It can burn DVDs, and the only setting I can tweak is 4.3 vs 16:9.

To make a long story short - when playing a DVD burnt with Edius, using the same footage as I used with Vegas, the result is quite different. The video fills the screen, and it maintains the original proportions. This means that circles are perfectly round, and all in all the video looks great. But it also means that the video is cropped, on all sides. I wonder how it looks on another TV, a real 16:9 TV!

I would prefer letter boxing to cropping, though.
I find this very interesting, it is obvious htat the TV is fed with different "food", depending on whether DVD Architect or Edius is burning the DVD. In Edius, there is no "render as", there is one single operation from the time line to the final DVD (at least this is how I did it)

My suggestion. Take your DVD to retailer with a selection of TVs and DVD players. Have a look see what happens.
This is what I will do the coming weekend!

Your TV resolution 1440x900 is a common computer resolution and is actually called 16:10 the same as 1920x1200 is 16:10. For correct display of widescreen there should always be some letterboxing. If the TV does not have such a mode it is poorly designed.
The widescreen aspect bit is embedded in the MPEG2 file and can be checked in numerous programs such as Vegas, DVD Workshop and Mpegcraft to name three where the file properties will say 16:9 if it is present. Most authoring programs recognise the bit and set widescreen accordingly. I am not familiar with DVD Architect.
Once you have made a DVD you can play it in Power DVD or similar program and it should display as 16:9. Power DVD has an icon you can click on to display the file properties and it will say 16:9 if it is.
You can also open the .IFO files with IFOEdit and check the display parameters of the video files. They can also be edited if they are not what you want then saved and reburnt.
Most importantly though if your TV does not have a mode which displays widescreen with some letterboxing you are not going to win because it is not a 16:9 TV. Everything will be slightly stretched vertically.
The DVD player has to be told in set up whether the TV is 16:9 or 4:3 and adds the letterboxing to widescreen only if it is set for a 4:3 TV.
Malcolm

Malcolm,

Once you have made a DVD you can play it in Power DVD or similar program
I use the VLC media player, and the video looks perfect here.

You can also open the .IFO files with IFOEdit and check the display parameters of the video files.
I have, and there is a difference. I will come back with more details later today.

Most importantly though if your TV does not have a mode which displays widescreen with some letterboxing you are not going to win because it is not a 16:9 TV. Everything will be slightly stretched vertically.
Commercial videos look GREAT, with a considerable letterboxing.

The DVD player has to be told in set up whether the TV is 16:9 or 4:3 and adds the letterboxing to widescreen only if it is set for a 4:3 TV.
Hm.. ?? When I set it ti 16:9, commercial video looks great, WITH letterboxing, my videos are stretched, filling the screen, and look bad.

I did some further research on this AFD flag. It would seem I might have gotten this slightly wrong. The correct name could be Action Format Descriptor. The spec only covers it's use in digital video e.g. SDI and mpeg-2 broadcasts. The bits can define 4 aspect ratios. Their purpose is to tell Apsect Ratio Converters how much they can crop off the frame.Some broadcasters when fed a 16:9 HD signal will do a centre cutout for the analog transmissions however that'll be a problem if the content is not shot 4:3 safe e.g. titles go to the edge of the 16:9 frame. The AFD signal tells the ARCs to letterbox instead of pillarbox. To date SMPTE are still deciding on the standard for the bits, great.

What I have found zero info about is any flags in a composite video signal that should tell a TV what aspect ratio it should display the vision at.

All of the above could be totally irrelevant, I don't really know. I only mention it to correct my previous post.

Now when you say commercial DVDs look correct a question comes to mind. Are these actually 16:9 DVDs or are they 16:9 footage letterboxed into 4:3. The latter seems very common with titles sold in the USA. The former is the case for DVDs sold in Europe where 16:9 TVs are much more popular.

If your DVDA created DVD plays correctly with VLC I suspect that DVDA and Vegas are doing the right thing. What I'd like to know is how the commercial DVD plays in VLC. If you get a 4:3 frame with a 16:9 image in it with bars top and bottom then the commercial DVD that you're using as the reference is not a true 16:9 DVD which would explain a lot.

In the end I'm kind of siding with Malcom, the problem is likely to be your TV.

Bob.

Bob,
What I'd like to know is how the commercial DVD plays in VLC.


This is the DVD menu. It fills the screen and, as you see, is perfect in VLC. On my TV it gets squeezed (the circle is not perfect).


This is the movie played in VLC. It is letter-boxed in VLC, and the same on my TV. AND - looks just great in both VLC and on my TV.
I have not tried this movie on a real 16:9 TV


This is how it looks on TV. The white rectangle is added to visualize the screen borders.

In the end I'm kind of siding with Malcom, the problem is likely to be your TV.
In any case _ i am now able to make two kinds of DVDs. One which fills ths screen, squeezed (Vegas + DVDA) and one that fills the screen cropped and with correct proportions (Edius Neo). So obviously, there is at least two ways to do it. The interesting thing is.. the commercial players know how to deal with my TV :-) Yes, the menu is squeezed onto the screen real estate, neverheless the movie looks great. This is something worth looking into IMO.
I will investigate further, later today or tomorrow.

>>My TV's resolution is 1440x900<<

I've never heard of a TV with that resolution, but that is a common widescreen computer monitor resolution. Is your TV and actual "television" or is it a computer monitor being used to display televison signals. What is the brand and model number of the TV?

i noticed your TV crops down the image quite a bit. Strange.. my LCDTV never did THAT much. :?

Please give us pictures of what your video loks like in Vegas Preview, DVDA preview, played on a PC & played on your TV.

> What is the brand and model number of the TV?
Toshiba 19W300PG

I am starting to believe that this thread is superfluous, to some extent.. Maybe I should have got myself a larger TV to use for video editing. But I bought this small TV only to use it for monitoring purposes. As a matter of fact - I do not have an "ordinary" TV set at home :-)
Ok, but I have learnt a lot!!

One thing you could do is to take about ten seconds of footage and create a DVD using that short clip. Use exactly the settings you normally use. Then, prepare that DVD using DVD Architect. Finally, zip the IFO, VOB, BUP, etc. files and post it somewhere. It should only be a few megabytes and therefore easy to upload. We can try it on our respective equipment and see for ourselves.

Oh, and upload the DAR (DVD Architect project) file as well.

John

I think I have found the problem.

I just played out my copy of LOTR into my Sony monitor.
Switching the monitor into H-V Delay I can see what I assume is the AFD data. The monitor is being sent the flags and in Ingvarai's case I'd bet his TV reads the flag and switches aspect ratio to 16:9.

I also took a 16:9 DVD I made from a HDV tape. It plays out correctly, the DVD player reads the mpeg metadata and letterboxes the vision to the monitor. HOWEVER (drum roll) the AFD flag is missing! I can clearly see it is NOT in line 1 on the monitor. Ingvarai's TV will still think the vision it is getting is 4:3 even though his DVD player knows it is 4:3.

So now I know why none of my Vegas + DVDA authored DVDs are technically correct, bugger. I haven't a clue though how to set this right.

Bob.

I think it all boils down to a couple of issues:

1) I chose the wrong TV for monitoring my Vegas videos, I need a real 16:9 TV. When previewing 16:9 on the TV, using my Canopus 300 as "OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394/DV" connected to the TV with component cables, the image fills the screen. And as you know by now, the screen is more 14:9 than 16:9, so the image is stretched a lot on the Y-axis.

2) To the extent it really matters, I should probably find a way to serve users who happen to have the same kind of TV (see next point)

3) Technically the topic is interesting because I currently have two different applications, DVDA, and Edius Neo, and they make DVDs which play back differently on my setup. The DVDA video is squeezed into the TV's screen real estate, whereas the Edius generated DVD picture is placed in the center of the screen, proportions maintained right, and some of the picture then get cropped on all sides. I much prefer this to the DVDA counterpart.

I appreciate JohnMayer's suggestion about uploading the project, for others to test. As it is now, I will wait and experiement a little more. I want to find out about point (3). And you Bob, do you experience any problems whatsoever, when (if) the AFD flag is missing?