Widescreen image too small

barch78 wrote on 6/4/2007, 6:12 AM
I have completed my first VMS movie. I used the widescreen format.
I brought it into DVD Architect, added a menu and rendered and burned it on a DVD in a widescreen format.
When I play the DVD, the menu looks right and fills the entire width of my TV screen. However, when I play the movie the image shrinks so that I have a black margin on the left and right sides of the image.
How can I get the image to take the entire screen like it does with the menu?

Comments

barch78 wrote on 6/4/2007, 2:26 PM
Wow. Can't believe I have no answer on this after 8 hours. Anyone have a clue?
MSmart wrote on 6/4/2007, 2:34 PM
what is the source video?

You can try deselecting "keep aspect ratio" but I believe that would have to be done in VMS not AS.
barch78 wrote on 6/4/2007, 3:22 PM
I rendered it in VMS as an AVI file and brought it into DVD architect. Changed the properties to Widescreen format.
Tim L wrote on 6/4/2007, 10:52 PM
If I understand correctly, it sounds like your original project and original footage was in 4:3 (non-widescreen) mode.

You're getting just the opposite of letterboxing -- you get bars on the sides of your image, sometimes called "pillar boxing", because your source video is 4:3, while your DVD project is set for 16:9 widescreen. (Or at least that's my guess as to what's going on.)

Set your Vegas Movie Studio project as a widescreen format, and then your preview windows in Vegas will show the bars as well. You then have the choice to either keep your 4:3 video with bars on the sides, so you see everything in the original footage, or crop the video by expanding it and chopping off the top and bottom so that the width of the video fills the widescreen image format (but you lose the top and bottom of your footage).

You can do a pan/crop on each clip to adjust to the widescreen aspect, or you could look intro track motion to do the same thing.

Make sure you select a widescreen format for rendering / make movie. There may also be a checkbox when rendering that says something like "expand to fill output aspect", or something like that. I don't recall for sure, and I'm not at a computer with Vegas or VMS installed.

Tim L
barch78 wrote on 6/5/2007, 3:35 AM
Tim,
Thanks for your reply. Your reference to the pillar boxing sounds right since I can see a faint dark gray pair of pillars to the left and right of the image in DVD architect preview.
I know I set up the original VMS as Widescreen but I possibly could have done something wrong. I will check this tonight when getting back to my project.
barch78 wrote on 6/5/2007, 5:52 PM
Ok,
I took the AVI file back to VMS and made sure that all images fell within the safe margins (there were some that were vertical and took up the entire screen.
I re rendered it as another AVI file and brought it into DVD Architect and I am getting the same results.
The image is still too small and has the two grey pillars on each side. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? I would hate to have to go back to using Pinnacle just to finish this movie!
Tim L wrote on 6/5/2007, 7:50 PM
How are you rendering? Via the "Make Movie" icon?

When you render the avi file, are you being careful to select a DV Widescreen format for rendering?

If you shrink the images so that they fit *within* the safe area, you very well can end up with empty space showing on some TV's. What kind of TV set are you viewing this on? Some newer TV's can have almost no overscan, and will show virtually all of the 720x480 image you see in the Vegas preview screen. Other TV's lose a lot of the image all the way around (especially older CRT TV's).

The safe area outline basically says "anything within these margins will be visible on almost all TV's". However, some TV's will show plenty of what's outside the margins.

Tim L
Superman wrote on 6/6/2007, 5:41 AM
Grey pillar boxes? That sounds like it is coming from your TV. The renderer would leave black pillars because there is just no information there to render. Only blackness. Grey boxes sound like they are generated by your TV (plasma probably) to save your TV from burn-in from constant non-use of those areas. Sounds like you are feeding the TV a 4:3 signal.

I have done only 16:9 movies for three years or more and they work perfectly every time on VMS. And I have 4.0. I'm not sure what else you haven't done yet, but make sure you set everything up for Widescreen NTSC, and then uncheck "maintain aspect ratio" on all of the clips (that automatically letterboxes the movie if checked). Or maybe its the other way around. You'll notice in the preview window if it is letterboxed. You want it to look stretched in the preview window; this is called anamorphic widescreen

Search the forums because I know in the past there has been plenty of 16:9 advice given.
barch78 wrote on 6/6/2007, 2:10 PM
Tim,
Yes I am using the ¡§make movie¡¨ option.
Yes I selected Widescreen.
The TV is not the issue since I am seeing the reduced image when I use the ¡§Preview¡¨ that is supposed to mimic a DVD.

Superman,
I call them grey pillars (boxes) because they are a shade lighter than the black.

I am going to experiment with a short video clip and see if I get the desired results. The movie I am working with now is about 20 minutes long and takes a while to render and then burn.
I¡¦ll be back. Thanks for your help guys. Please don¡¦t leave me ƒº. I am a former Pinnacle Studio user who is still learning VMS.
Chienworks wrote on 6/6/2007, 3:47 PM
Sorry i can't help you with the widescreen troubles; it looks like others have already covered all the ground i can think of. But, by way of advice i'll offer this ...

While experimenting remember that you don't have to always render the whole video for each thing you try. You could render just a second or two of it. Keep a few DVD+RW discs lying around handy and you can render a few seconds and burn to a DVD in just a few minutes. No need to spend any more time than that just for experimenting.