I have a couple of 1080p MP4 files with are "old" films, so they are 4:3 aspect ratio. The native resolution of the MP4s is 1236 x 928 pixels.
When I play the MP4 files in a video player (like QuickTime Player), they are displayed pillarboxed in a 16:9 (the proper 4:3 video is in the middle with black bars on the side).
I wanted to burn them onto a blu-ray disc, so I did the "drag-n-drop" into the "video" window (with "blu-ray video" selected). There were absolutely no options/buttons to allow me to specify an aspect ratio, but I assumed that Toast would give me a disc with the same thing I saw in the QuickTime player.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I put the finished disc into my blu-ray player and instead of pillarboxed video (which is what I should have), I instead get a disc where the original 4:3 video has been artificially stretched to fill the full 16:9 frame!
Can somebody explain why Toast is doing this? I do not like it and I see no options within toast to force it to respect the original aspect ratio for blu-ray.
Going back to the Toast window, If I click on the "edit" button and look at the video file in the 'player' (where you can set the button picture), the image is still properly pillarboxed in the frame, so it 'looks' right there, it just doesn't turn out right when Toast does the actual encoding/burning.
On the right side of the edit window, it shows JVT/AVC Coding, 1440x1080, 23.98fps, MPEG-4 Audio. I know 1440x1080 is the full 16:9 canvas, so maybe it's something in the encoding that is stripping out the pillarboxes (or not correctly adding them)?
If there's no way to fix this in Toast, is there some sort of program I can download for the Mac that can "force" pillarboxes onto these titles before burning in Toast? I don't want to waste any more valuable BD-R discs on this, and if there's no fix, I feel really stupid for buying the blu-ray plug-in when I could have gone and bought a different BD authoring program instead.
I've attached photos showing the correct pillarboxed image (from Toast's "edit" window), and the incorrect stretched image from the burnt blu-ray.