Interesting Question On The Jacket Picture

Cunhambebe wrote on 2/7/2006, 5:57 PM

Hi there! I've just burned my first NTSC Widescreen Project, and wanted to include a jacket picture at the same size (widescreen). In fact, the picture does not show properly at 4:3 (even selecting on my Sony DVD the options 4:3 letterbox, pan scan or 16:9). I can only guess the jacket picture has to be 4:3, in spite of the fact that on the preview screen it shows the correct size. What do I do? Change the size of the JP to 4:3 or keep the same size and test on a 16:9 plasma or LCD screen? Thanks in advance.

Comments

bStro wrote on 2/7/2006, 10:10 PM

To the best of my knowledge, the DVD specs do not allow for a "widescreen" jacket picture -- only 4:3 ones.

Does that answer your question?

Rob

Cunhambebe wrote on 2/8/2006, 3:31 AM

What a pity! The jacket picture was previously resized with PS to NTSC Widescreen too, and it shows properly on DVDA preview. What a pity! I guess I'll delete it from the project - I don't think it's a good idea to burn a 16:9 project with a JP at 4:3. Thanks for taking time to respond, friend.
Cheers,
Mark

Cunhambebe wrote on 2/8/2006, 5:22 AM

I've just re-authored the project, inserting a 4:3 jacket picture - SAME PROBLEM, and I guess we can blame it on DVDA, since it considers the whole project as 16:9 Widescreen and it doesn't do any good resizing the JP. Any suggestions? I guess Sony should be considering this on the next version of DVDA.
Even with the problem, I guess I'll keep the JP. Thanks and please, suggestions are welcome!

bStro wrote on 2/8/2006, 8:58 AM

Could probably help you more if you said exactly what happens when you try putting a 4:3 jacket picture in a 16:9 project. Is the JP squished? Is there an improper offset? Letterboxed incorrectly? Does it just not appear at all?

A couple suggestions just for the heck of it:

A) Set the project to regular NTSC but set all your widescreen elements (videos and menus) to NTSC widescreen. It's perfectly legit to mix 4:3 and 16:9 content within the same project, so maybe if the base project is 4:3, the JP will display properly. Or...

B) Try resizing your JP picture to 852x480. This is the approximate "square pixel equivilent" of a 720x480 widescreen image. Might work, might not. Have a try, nd make sure you're using re-writeables. :)

Cunhambebe wrote on 2/8/2006, 12:57 PM

thanks so much for replying...

Could probably help you more if you said exactly what happens when you try putting a 4:3 jacket picture in a 16:9 project. Is the JP squished? Is there an improper offset? Letterboxed incorrectly? Does it just not appear at all?

Letterboxed incorrectly. That's it. I've got a Sony DVD Player here and my TV set is 4:3. When I watch 16:9 DVDs, I just configure the DVD to 16:9 and then the image fills the screen completely; leaving to 4:3 will make the black bars appear. Here in this case, both configurations show the same thing, an image that does not reach the top of the screen completely (by just a few centimeters).

You wrote this:
A) Set the project to regular NTSC but set all your widescreen elements (videos and menus) to NTSC widescreen. It's perfectly legit to mix 4:3 and 16:9 content within the same project, so maybe if the base project is 4:3, the JP will display properly. Or...

-Maybe, who knows, I'll might try this - thanks. Let's see if DVDA will not resize everything - guess it would have to recompress all teh videos....who knows.

B) Try resizing your JP picture to 852x480. This is the approximate "square pixel equivilent" of a 720x480 widescreen image. Might work, might not. Have a try, nd make sure you're using re-writeables. :)

-It's a good idea. But I've found an intermediate (lol) workaround for this problem. Since my DVD is a Movie DVD (one file playing right after the other one with no menus at all), I've linked the last clip to a menu, and this one would work more or less like a JP... I know it may be a dirty workaround, but this way the picture is shown correctly and I have also inserted a button for restarting the whole thing - which is good, anyway! Thanks and let's see if one of your 2 solutions work. I'll post a reply here later. Thanks again :)