An uncompressed AVI file does not store its pixel aspect ratio. So, DVD Architect assumes the pixel aspect ratio is 1.0, when in fact it was rendered as 0.909... That's why the uncompressed video clip looks "pinched".

thanks sonicsdb, that's exactly what appears to be happening...is there any way to fix this? or do I need to compress the files before bringing them into DVDA?

If the answer is yes, i do need to compress before bringing the files into DVDA - I did try rendering the uncompressed files using the MPG2 "DVD NTSC" template in the "render as" setup in V4. DVDA didn't allow me to import those files..incidentially, those files were saved by V4 with an ".mv2" extension, instead of just .mpg. Any ideas? Thanks!!!

There is no good way to work around this problem. The best I can suggest is the following...

1. File | Render As...
2. Set 'Save as type' to 'Video for Windows (*.avi)'
3. Set 'Template' to 'Default Template (uncompressed)'
4. Click Custom...
5. On the Video page, set 'Frame size' to 'Custom frame size'
6. Set 'Width' to '655'
7. Set 'Pixel aspect ratio' to '1.000'
8. Click Ok
9. Click Save

I suspect you used the 'DVD NTSC video stream' template. This creates a .m2v file. A .m2v is a video elementary stream which DVD Architect does not open. Please use the 'DVD Architect NTSC video stream' template. This will create a video-only MPEG file.

This is actually extremely annoying, and the reason why I currently does not use DVDA very much.

I record high quality MJPEG 720x576 on my HTPC. Very often I want to throw some files on a DVD. Right now my files look bad if I throw them right into DVDA because it is impossible to tell DVDA to "stretch to fill output frame". My files are AVI and get interpeted as square pixels by DVDA. So, for serious projects I encode maually using Vegas so I am able to correct the aspect, for all "light and fast" more or less direct-to-DVD-projects I have to use Sonic myDVD, because that program stretch my files to the correct size.

Please include a "stretch to fit output frame" in the next release!

Best regards,
eirikso

MJPEG 720x576 should be able to hold the aspect ratio field and should be OK in DVDA if it has been set correctly by the HTPC - right?
Uncompressed and MJPEG workflow by transcoding it to MPEG-2 in Vegas4 shouldn't be that much different in length to using DVDA to recompress - right? In both cases DVDA would subsequently have to author/compile the DVD-Video file set.

Perhaps going via Vegas4 when not editing seems like overkill - but surely not in this instance. I use Mediostream's neoDVDplus for quick and dirty, simple menu, MJPEG/DVcamcorder to DVD-Video compilations (Ligos encoder).