17 replies to this topic

[redant1]

This is my dilema.  I've just started recording my home videos in widescreen (16:9) format but am having some trouble in the authoring the dvds.  I can easily create a widescreen dvd to play on a wide screen tv.  The problem is that not all of my tv's are wide screen and would like to be able to view the video on those tv's without having the picture squeezed.  Does Roxio 9 give me the ability to embed the 16:9 video in a 4:3 frame with the black bars on top and bottom?  I've heard this being called "The Letter boxed" effect.  Is it an option available to me?

[gi7omy]

Normally any domestic DVD player/TV combination will take a 16:9 format disc and show it in letterbox on a 4:3  player/TV.

I don't have widescreen myself, but I have played 16:9 discs on it in the 'letterbox' format

Try it on a test disc and see what happens is about the best advice I can give

[ggrussell]

Does Roxio 9 give me the ability to embed the 16:9 video in a 4:3 frame with the black bars on top and bottom?  I've heard this being called "The Letter boxed" effect.  Is it an option available to me?

Yes, you can do that, but when you view that DVD on a widescreen TV, it will still be 4:3 letterboxed (not 'true' widescreen).  MyDVD creates true anamorphic widescreen video DVDs which means the 'black bars' are not encoded in the video.  Proper viewing is up to the DVD PLAYER.  When viewed on a 4:3 TV, the DVD PLAYER should be set to 'letterbox'. That way the DVD PLAYER will automatically add the black bars during playback. When viewing that same DVD on a widescreen TV, the DVD PLAYER should be set to 'widescreen'.  This is exactly how commercial DVDs now work.

Now if you force Videowave/MyDVD to add the black bars, the final output will be 4:3 regardless of where you play it back.  When viewed on 16:9 TV, you would have to use the zoom function of the TV to fill the screen and you would be losing resolution and quality.

[redant1]

Yes, you can do that, but when you view that DVD on a widescreen TV, it will still be 4:3 letterboxed (not 'true' widescreen).  MyDVD creates true anamorphic widescreen video DVDs which means the 'black bars' are not encoded in the video.  Proper viewing is up to the DVD PLAYER.  When viewed on a 4:3 TV, the DVD PLAYER should be set to 'letterbox'. That way the DVD PLAYER will automatically add the black bars during playback. When viewing that same DVD on a widescreen TV, the DVD PLAYER should be set to 'widescreen'.  This is exactly how commercial DVDs now work.

Now if you force Videowave/MyDVD to add the black bars, the final output will be 4:3 regardless of where you play it back.  When viewed on 16:9 TV, you would have to use the zoom function of the TV to fill the screen and you would be losing resolution and quality.

The reason I was asking about embedding the 16:9 into a letter boxed 4:3 is because when I play the widescreen version of my home movie on my regular tv it does not do the letter boxing automatically.  It doesn't sqeeze the picture either, it seems to cut off the sides of the video.  If I then insert a "commercial" DVD the letter boxing appears.  I don't think its the dvd player.  The wide screen movie will play just fine on my wide screen tv.

Now I am getting my video source from a digital camcorder and I believe either you or someone else suggested that there are know problems with this.  What are they? How can I work around these problems?

[gi7omy]

Check the remote control on the 4:3 TV - mine has a button that will force letterbox (16:9)

[ggrussell]

It doesn't sqeeze the picture either, it seems to cut off the sides of the video.  If I then insert a "commercial" DVD the letter boxing appears.  I don't think its the dvd player.  The wide screen movie will play just fine on my wide screen tv.

Have you actually checked the DVD player connected to the 4:3 TV?  Sounds like it is set for pan/scan.  Doesn't matter if the disc works on the widescreen TV or not unless you are moving the DVD player, too.   I would guess that you have two TVs and two DVD players.  I simply can not help unless you at least check the DVD player to see if it is set correct for the 4:3 TV. The DVD player must be set for letterbox.

The known issue has to do with losing 16:9 flag completely when capturing to MPEG file only which mean the DVD wouldn't playback correctly on the widescreen TV.  Don't think that is your problem.

Edited by ggrussell, 09 July 2007 - 10:35 AM.

[redant1]

Have you actually checked the DVD player connected to the 4:3 TV?  Sounds like it is set for pan/scan.  Doesn't matter if the disc works on the widescreen TV or not unless you are moving the DVD player, too.   I would guess that you have two TVs and two DVD players.  I simply can not help unless you at least check the DVD player to see if it is set correct for the 4:3 TV. The DVD player must be set for letterbox.

The known issue has to do with losing 16:9 flag completely when capturing to MPEG file only which mean the DVD wouldn't playback correctly on the widescreen TV.  Don't think that is your problem.

You are right in that I am using two different dvd players on each television.  What i don't understand is why will my dvd player, that is with the 4:3 television set, play widescreen "commercial" dvd's correctly with the letter boxing but not the home video created with Roxio9.  I still do not beleive that the problem is with the dvd player.  I do have two other dvd players I will try later tonight and see what happens.

I do have a camcorder that records the video without the 16:9 flag set but I have obtained a program that allows me to add the flag.  Now, I am a programmer and would like to know the header format for mpeg-2 video file.  Maybe this way i can find what is going on with Roxio's generated movie and fix it myself.  I am under the assumption that I may need to change some settings in that header.  Does anybody know where I can find the header format?

Edited by redant1, 10 July 2007 - 08:13 AM.

[gi7omy]

The format is fixed by international standards and I doubt if Roxio did (or would even be allowed to) alter that

Header format - check here

[ggrussell]

You are right in that I am using two different dvd players on each television.  What i don't understand is why will my dvd player, that is with the 4:3 television set, play widescreen "commercial" dvd's correctly with the letter boxing but not the home video created with Roxio9.  I still do not beleive that the problem is with the dvd player.

You STILL haven't stated whether  or not that you have checked the DVD player connected to the 4:3 TV.  Is it or is it not set to 'letterbox'?  It MUST be set to 'letterbox'  -- not pan/scan or widescreen.   If you aren't willing to take one simple step, I don't think we can help you much.  

It could just be a compatiblity issue with that particular player.  In the past year, I have only seen one other user swear that no matter what settings on his DVD player, the DVD he burned with MyDVD would not playback letterboxed on 4:3 TV. If it were an issue with the software, we would have seen many more posts here in the forum and the problem would be fairly easy to reproduce.

[redant1]

You STILL haven't stated whether  or not that you have checked the DVD player connected to the 4:3 TV.  Is it or is it not set to 'letterbox'?  It MUST be set to 'letterbox'  -- not pan/scan or widescreen.   If you aren't willing to take one simple step, I don't think we can help you much.  

It could just be a compatiblity issue with that particular player.  In the past year, I have only seen one other user swear that no matter what settings on his DVD player, the DVD he burned with MyDVD would not playback letterboxed on 4:3 TV. If it were an issue with the software, we would have seen many more posts here in the forum and the problem would be fairly easy to reproduce.

I did not have a chance to check yesterday or the day before but I will try to ckeck it tonight.  Maybe that is the whole problem, I just assumed it was since every "commercial" wide screen movie I've played on that player has played the movie with the letter boxing.  Again, I'll try to check it tonight.

[redant1]

I did not have a chance to check yesterday or the day before but I will try to ckeck it tonight.  Maybe that is the whole problem, I just assumed it was since every "commercial" wide screen movie I've played on that player has played the movie with the letter boxing.  Again, I'll try to check it tonight.

Ok, I've had success for the most part.  The problem was not with the dvd player as it was set correctly.  The problem was that I have to make sure the 16:9 flag is set at three different times (parts of the process).  The first is right after I extract the files from the camcorder, the flag is not set and need to make sure it is set.  Secondly, when I edit the movie I need to make sure the 16:9 option is set for the project and finally when I author with MyDvd I also need to make sure the 16:9 setting is set correctly.  I finally do get the letter boxing on my 4:3 tv.

My next problem now lies with the video itself.  It seems that I now have lines or noise in parts of the video and is really just not viewable.  I'm assuming that I just had too many things running in the background and when I have time this coming weekend I'll redo the project and make sure nothing else is running in the background.  Hopefully this will fix my problem.

Thanks for all of your help and I'll post an update after I redo the video.  Again thanks...

[redant1]

Ok, what am I doing wrong now, I go through the whole process and I can see the movie in the preview of MyDvd.  I then go to burn and it goes through that process and the disk pops out.  I then put the dvd in a player and I can hear the sound but the screen is black.  The same goes if I try to play the dvd on the computer.  What is wrong?

[Bean]

You STILL haven't stated whether  or not that you have checked the DVD player connected to the 4:3 TV.  Is it or is it not set to 'letterbox'?  It MUST be set to 'letterbox'  -- not pan/scan or widescreen.   If you aren't willing to take one simple step, I don't think we can help you much.  

It could just be a compatiblity issue with that particular player.  In the past year, I have only seen one other user swear that no matter what settings on his DVD player, the DVD he burned with MyDVD would not playback letterboxed on 4:3 TV. If it were an issue with the software, we would have seen many more posts here in the forum and the problem would be fairly easy to reproduce.

Hi Greg,

I think what he's asking (and the answer I've been searching for) is why is there any need to have to switch your TV setups from 4:3 to 16:9? I have never had to do this in the past when I play a commercial dvd and I would bet many consumers don't even realize they have this option anyway. My standard SONY TV and DVD players have always been set to 4:3 and when I put in a commercial dvd in like say, JAWS, it plays widescreen.

So what is it in the encoding or burning process that makes these commercial dvds automatically play widescreen without us having to screw around with any setups?

Thanks for any help!

Edited by Bean, 18 July 2007 - 01:06 PM.

[gi7omy]

As a former TV Service Manager over here, I can assure you that the problem is on the playback end and not in the software.

So many supposedly 'automatic' settings don't work as they're supposed to - even my own goggle-box starts up in 16:9 instead of 4:3 (it ain't wide screen) and I have to manually reset it every single time it's turned on

As for DVD players - the sheer number I've seen marked 'WMA', 'VCD', etc 'capable' that have the settings for that turned OFF as default would stagger you (and the customer brings it back screaming and we have to use the over-ride codes to unlock the hidden menu and set it up because the manufacturer just didn't bother)

[Bean]

As a former TV Service Manager over here, I can assure you that the problem is on the playback end and not in the software.

So many supposedly 'automatic' settings don't work as they're supposed to - even my own goggle-box starts up in 16:9 instead of 4:3 (it ain't wide screen) and I have to manually reset it every single time it's turned on

As for DVD players - the sheer number I've seen marked 'WMA', 'VCD', etc 'capable' that have the settings for that turned OFF as default would stagger you (and the customer brings it back screaming and we have to use the over-ride codes to unlock the hidden menu and set it up because the manufacturer just didn't bother)

Is this a Pal or a USA/non-USA problem were talking about here, then? I've never ever had to mess with my screen ratio set ups on either my dvd players or televisions when playing a commercial disk. It would really bug me if people who purchased my movie are watching a cropped-up, stretched-out version because it didn't keep the 16:9 ratio I burned the disk with and they weren't aware of any settings they had to change to view my movie the way I intended them to view it. Thanks for the reply.

[ggrussell]

Bean -- you've got to understand there are many situations were standard defaults just doesn't work as you would expect.  MyDVD creates and burns a true anamorphic widescreen video DVD which just means that the 'black bars' is NOT ENCODED into the video.  The video uses the entire 720x480 with non-square pixels.  IT IS UP TO THE DVD PLAYER to 'unsquish' the pixels and display the image correctly.

So how does the DVD play KNOW what type of TV is connected? It doesn't!  That is what the settings are for:
when connected to a 4:3 TV, then the DVD player should be set to 'letterbox'.  99% of all setups will default to this.  Commercial DVDs will playback letterboxed and so will a 16:9 video DVD created with MyDVD.

When connected to a 4:3 TV, there is a second option called 'pan/scan'.  This will work on 'most' commercial DVDs.  This zooms in and fills the 4:3 screen but should pan back and forth with the action.  This will NOT work with MyDVD created disc because the 'panning' info is not there.

When connected to a 16:9 TV, the DVD player MUST BE SET TO WIDESCREEN.  This passes the entire 16:9 video onto the TV without adding the letterbox 'black bars'.  If you use this setting on a 4:3 TV, the image will look squished.

Edited by ggrussell, 18 July 2007 - 05:31 PM.

[Bean]

Bean -- you've got to understand there are many situations were standard defaults just doesn't work as you would expect.  MyDVD creates and burns a true anamorphic widescreen video DVD which just means that the 'black bars' is NOT ENCODED into the video.  The video uses the entire 720x480 with non-square pixels.  IT IS UP TO THE DVD PLAYER to 'unsquish' the pixels and display the image correctly.

So how does the DVD play KNOW what type of TV is connected? It doesn't!  That is what the settings are for:
when connected to a 4:3 TV, then the DVD player should be set to 'letterbox'.  99% of all setups will default to this.  Commercial DVDs will playback letterboxed and so will a 16:9 video DVD created with MyDVD.

When connected to a 4:3 TV, there is a second option called 'pan/scan'.  This will work on 'most' commercial DVDs.  This zooms in and fills the 4:3 screen but should pan back and forth with the action.  This will NOT work with MyDVD created disc because the 'panning' info is not there.

When connected to a 16:9 TV, the DVD player MUST BE SET TO WIDESCREEN.  This passes the entire 16:9 video onto the TV without adding the letterbox 'black bars'.  If you use this setting on a 4:3 TV, the image will look squished.

Thanks, Greg. It's making more sense now. I'm going to test all my equipment this weekend.

[NiceAndBlue]

This may be an older topic but I believe I can shed some light on it.

This is not a problem with your dvd player (the fact that commercially made dvds work correctly makes that apparent. This is pretty obvious and I'm not really sure why so much emphasis what put on this by other posters.)

MyDVD 9 sometimes incorrectly flags the IFO files to playback 16:9 files as letterbox on a 4:3 television. It flags it as Pan&Scan instead of letterbox. Obviously you have to have your dvd player set to the correct aspect ratio, but if it was set incorrectly then commerically produced dvds would have the exact same problem.

Luckily there is a very easy solution. You just need to get a freeware program called Ifoedit.


-Setup your dvd project like normal in MyDVD9
-When you're ready to encode and burn your dvd hit burn
-Now instead of actually burning to a dvd now click on the save to file option.
-This will create a folder called VIDEO_TS with all the necessary files in it.
-Now open up Ifoedit.
-hit open
-go to the VIDEO_TS folder and open up each .ifo file and make the change from pan&scan to widescreen (you just have to double click on the line and make the change)
-then hit save and change the other .ifo files (it will not reflect the change you made until you hit save and then reopen it).
-after you've made all these changes you can just create a data dvd and put the whole VIDEO_TS in it and burn.

I hope this helps clear things up.