Hi,

Thanks for the info.
It worked!!

I am still a little confused though.
The settings you advised me to use are available if I use MainConcepts MPEG2 codec. Here I can set the 16:9 aspect ration etc.
If I choose PAL DV Widescreen, none of these options are available.
Can this be right?

Thanks again for your help.

Also, if anybody wants further education on this subject visit: www.digitalbits.com
Very helpful.

> I am still a little confused though.
The settings you advised me to use are available if I use MainConcepts MPEG2 codec. Here I can set the 16:9 aspect ration etc.
If I choose PAL DV Widescreen, none of these options are available.

I'm not sure what you mean. PAL DV Widescreen is 16:9. And the MPEG-2 format has 16:9 switches. What are you missing?

///d@

Hi,

What I mean is, if I import footage shot in 16:9 format, and then go to render:
File Type: Video for Windows,
Template: PAL DV Widescreen
the finished movie is 4:3 with black borders top and bottom.(?)

If I load the same footage and choose:
File Type: MainConcepts MPEG-2
Template: PAL DVD
Click on the custom button and then on the Video tab, choose 16:9 from the Aspect ratio option, then the movie renders as a perfect 16:9 movie.

I just thought that 16:9 footage rendered using the PAL DVD Widescreen template would produce a 16:9 movie.
Maybe I'm overlooking something.
Thanks.

o7:

> What I mean is, if I import footage shot in 16:9 format, and then go to render:
File Type: Video for Windows,
Template: PAL DV Widescreen
the finished movie is 4:3 with black borders top and bottom.(?)


As played by what?

I think the problem might be that your project settings are not also set to widescreen. File > Properties > Template > DV PAL Widescreen.

Make sure to set the Video Preview to "Display Square Pixels" so you aren't confused by anything shown "squeezed" (anamorphically).

///d@

Ahem..................Display Square Pixels is the solution.
Perhaps I will give the manual another read!

Thanks very much for your help. Top notch support service!

I also noticed in the 3.0c posting that a recent bug fix was "PAL Widescreen DV renders now use correctly auto-switching format flag" so make sure you get the 3.0c download so when you play your DV PAL Widescreen tape, your widescreen set kicks into wide mode.
///d@

do I understand you correctly that when I choose the DEFAULT MPEG-2 render settings, I have to change the aspect ratio setting from 4:3 to 16:9? Can you tell me why the "default" setting for DVD does not default to 16:9 playback? I've been using the default setting and it looked ok on my 4:3 test monitor--letterboxed in a frame that looked good.

Unfortunately, when I tested on several commercial widescreen TVs, the image still looked letterboxed--as if it were a 2.35:1 image. This seems to be a different problem from the one you responded to above, but would setting Vegas's MPEG-2 render setting aspect ratio to 16:9 help this situation?

If not, can you suggest what would?

I'm authoring with Apple's DVD Studio Pro, which indicates it outputs a 4:3 image. This would suggest the playback device would know to stretch it horizpontally to fit a 16:9 screen. My Vegas project settings are for NTSC Widescreen, and all Pan/crop dialogs are set to "match output aspect"

How am I getting this excessively wide image?

Thanks for your help.

WT

If you have a 16:9 project, and your DVD authoring software can handle an anamorphic 16:9 MPEG-2 encode, then set the 16:9 aspect switch in the MainConcept encoder, yes. For 4:3 playback, your player will scale the image down vertically, for playback on a 16:9 set, the set will stretch it horizontally.
///d@

Dennis:
I'll try it. But please, to help me understand this process (I've read everything on this topic I could find, and still find it not all that clear), you say

"For 4:3 playback, your player will scale the image down vertically,"

My understanding is that a 16:9 image is encoded in a 4:3 frame whose image is too tall and skinny. So for playback on a 4:3 monitor, the player still stretches the image horizontally so you still get a 16:9 image with black bars at top and bottom.

I don't understand why it would scale it down vertically, as you say.

Can you clarify, please?

Thanks

WT

Widetrack, i think you're stuck on semantics. Stretching horizontally or shrinking verically both amount to the same thing.

An anamorphic 16:9 image encoded in a 4:3 frame is squeezed together horizontally. I was saying that when you play that DVD and your player is set to go to a 4:3 screen, it squeezes the image vertically (adding black bars) so the frame aspect is correct (16:9 letterboxed in 4:3). It can't stretch it horizontally, because it would get clipped.

Actually, some players have a setting for this: the image gets stretched back out horizontally, and clipped, and there is supposed to be panning data in the stream to move it back and forth to the interesting parts of the scene, but I've never seen it done myself. I don't think I'd like to.

///d@

Dennis:

Thanks for the clarification. That's the way I understood it.

I'll try re encoding, authoring and testing again and let you know how it goes.

Might it not be better to have the 16:9 option as the default in the MPEG-2 DVD template? Aren't DVDs typically produced in widescreen?

Best,

WT