widescreen pulling hair out

moosemusa wrote on 10/22/2004, 12:22 PM
i am trying to produce a widescreen dvd to play on my wide screen tv. it seems that i have used every possible combination of setting and i still get letterboxing and / or squishing of the image. can someone tell me what i am doing wrong.

1. widescreen video shot with a sony dcr-hc85 (which according to the press is one of the few consumer digicams to produce true widescreen video).
2. for project properties i pick ntsc dv widescreen. ( i have tried both checking and unchecking stretch video to fill output frame). i have fast video resizing checked (what is this option?)
3. when making the movie i pick dvd architech ntsc widestream video stream
4. i separately render the audio as a wav file under advanced render using the default settings.
5. i close vms4 and run dvd architect.
6. in project properties of dvd architect i set project video format to ntsc widescreen.
7. when i attemp to prepare dvd i am told the video will be recompressed. why?
8. it then takes 16 minutes to burn a 16 second dvd (on a newer sony vaio). visually it looks like the disk is 1/4 burnt !!!???
9. the dvd doesn't fill the screen like a regular widescreen and is squished.

when looking at the vob files with dvdpatcher it appears that the 16:9 flag is already set.

i've wasted about 10 disks trying various combos. can anyone help?



Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 10/22/2004, 1:24 PM
One possibility, although this is a fairly high-end consumer camcorder -- On many consumer cams, as I understand, 16:9 isn't true wide-screen but is actually a faux wide-screen made by masking the top and bottom of a standard 4:3.

I guess the real test would be how it looks in your preview window when you play it in MS. Is it truly a wider image or just a letterboxed 4:3?

Just taking a shot...
moosemusa wrote on 10/22/2004, 1:35 PM
when i play the ts_ifo file with intervideo windvd on the computer, it comes out as true widescreen. the problem must be somewhere in the burning process.
Former user wrote on 10/22/2004, 1:43 PM
Are you sure you have your DVD player set up to show true widescreen?

Dave T2
allyn wrote on 10/22/2004, 2:06 PM
and make sure your tv is set to stretch mode.

btw, when testing stuff like this i always use RW disks which i can just erase and use again. but some dvd players don't recognize the RW disks.
allyn wrote on 10/22/2004, 2:08 PM
the fact that the video is being recompressed by dvd architect seems suspicious.
moosemusa wrote on 10/22/2004, 3:05 PM
i've owned the widescreen for 2 years and buy nothing but widescreen dvd's. i think i've got that part figured out (nevertheless i did cycle thru all possible dvd / tv screen format combos out of desperation).
Atheryn wrote on 10/22/2004, 5:08 PM
I'm having trouble with the screen sizing too, although unlike you, I am aiming for a full-screen picture.

My problem is that I have a digital camera that records video footage at 640x480, which conforms to the TV aspect ratio of 4:3. There is a template option in Vegas Movie Studio 4.0 for that exact screen size/aspect in NTSC format, which is great - but there is no such option in DVD Architect Studio 2.0. The only NTSC options in DVD Architect are for a screen size of 720x480, which I do not understand - that is NOT at the 4:3 ratio. So, no matter what I do in Vegas Movie Studio, the settings in DVD Architect Studio are resizing and then cropping my footage. My 640x480 footage is automatically being resized (holding the aspect ratio) to 720x540 to match the template width of 720 pixels, but since the template size is actually 720x480, 60 pixels are being cropped from the picture - 30 from the top and 30 from the bottom. That is a loss of 11% of the overall picture! This is really frustrating me - I cannot understand why one program does not have the same options the other has, when both programs rely so heavily upon eachother.

Ultimately, I think that Sony needs to make a downloadable fix available for both Vegas Movie Studio 4.0 and DVD Architect Studio 2.0 so that both programs have the same screen size options as eachother, AND so that the user has more control over the way footage is resized by each program to fill the template - right now it is completely automatic, and that is mostly why I am having this problem.

Cheers,
Atheryn.

ronatsony wrote on 10/23/2004, 9:01 AM
i'm a noob here, but i will tell you what works for me. I have a panny gs400, which shoots 16:9.

in MS4 when i'm done editing--i Make Movie/Save to hard drive. my settings are Video for Windows (avi) and NTSC DV Widescreen. the first pass is with Fast Video Resizing checked, but Stretch Video is unchecked. I am going to try the Advanced Render tab/Custom and the Video Rendering set to Best vice Good to see what difference that makes. Once the Render to avi is complete, i close MS and open DVDA 2.0 --i add the navigation icons etc, and then Make DVD/Prepare DVD with the default settings, followed by Burn DVD. my HT setup is a front pj with a video processor. when my vp is set to anamorphic, my 16:9 screen is filled.

Posters have mentioned here and other places that initially saving in mpg and then uncompressing, and then recompressing will get you worse pq than using avi initially. mpeg is lossy compression.

I also just started using +RW for the initial checking of my project. it burns fine and plays on my older dvd players. i have difficulty in erasing it though using Nero 6.? StartSmart on my external USB Pioneer 108.

try my settings and see if that helps---i hope it does,
ron
Atheryn wrote on 10/23/2004, 4:39 PM
I was just taking a look at the help documentation, and I found something that may help you with your problem. To read the info for yourself, do this:

While using DVD Architect Studio 2.0, bring up the Help menu and click on "Contents and Index" - click on the Index tab when the help screen comes up.

At the top of the list, you should see an entry for "16:9" - display this topic. It will come up with information for "Optimizing your Project". At the bottom of the screen, you'll see a couple of sub-links - click on the one labeled "Using the Optimize DVD Dialog to fine-tune your project". When the new information appears, scroll down and read the 4th entry - it describes how to set up your DVD-burning parameters so that your footage will be letterboxed on a regular TV, but will play at 16:9 on a widescreen TV.

I hope this solves the problem you're having!

Cheers,
Atheryn.