Recognizing Widescreen Movies From Fnal Cut Express

[gp4rts]

I have been using iDVD to create DVDs from my movies edited in Final Cut Express. iDVD recognizes my movies as widescreen, shows "Widescreen Preview" and generates a widescreen DVD. On two of my movies, Toast 7 does not recognize the movies as widescreen, but on a short test movie I made, it did recognize the clip as widescreen. What is happening here? I bought Toast 7 because it claims to handle widescreen format; apparently sometimes but not always. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong?

[tsantee]

What happens when I do that is I get a 4:3 "squished" image pillarboxed inside the TV's 16:9 screen.

The pillarbox is what should happen if you set the aspect ratio to 4:3 instead of 16:9. The menu will be pillarboxed but the video should appear widescreen when Toast is set to the 16:9 aspect ratio. I'm baffled why it is not in your case. Is the same true when the DVD is played on the Mac?

 

There is a donation-ware application called MyDVDEdit. Download and use it to examine the VIDEO_TS folder on the Toast-burned DVD. Select the VTS file in the upper left window and then click the IFO tab in the lower main window. You'll see an Aspect Ratio heading. It should be "16:9 auto Pan&Scan and Letterbox." What is it you see? If it isn't that you can use MyDVDEdit to change this. Copy the VIDEO_TS folder to your hard drive. Select it and choose Get Info. Change the permission for the folders contents from Read Only to Read & Write. Open this VIDEO_TS with MyDVDEdit and go to the Aspect Ratio setting. Change it for each VTS set and save the changes. You now can burn this VIDEO_TS to DVD using Toast's DVD Video from VIDEO_TS setting.

 

I've never had Toast 7 fail to set the 16:9 flag correctly. It even has "stretched" regular 4:3 video to widescreen when I've used the force 16:9 setting. As I said, I'm baffled that this isn't working properly for you.

[freshburn]

Make sure you are running Toast 7.0.2. Some aspect ratio problems were addressed in that update.

[gp4rts]

Thank you for your responses.

 

I am running 7.0.2.

 

I am sure that the flags in the VIDEO_TS files are set when I force the 16:9 ratio, since the TV sets respond correctly (widescreen for 16:9 TVs, letterbox for 4:3 TVs). When I used iDVD I had to edit these files so that "prohibit letterbox" flag was properly set. I got Toast since I heard that Toast 7 sets these flags properly (and it does). The problem is that it does not recognize the source media as 16:9; "thinks" it's 4:3 and displays it as a 4:3 insert in a 16:9 frame. In the one instance in which the media was properly recognized (a short test tape), the preview box in the Toast window was definitely a 16:9 shape, showing an undistorted picture. When the 16:9 format is not recognized, the preview box is 4:3-shaped and the image is stretched.

 

I tried using direct capture of a 16:9 tape directly from my camera (Sony DCR-PC101). Again, the preview box is 4:3, and although I did not go through the whole process, I am sure the resulting DVD would have the same problem.

 

Again, these videos are recognized as 16:9 by iDVD. Why not Toast? What could possibly be different about the one test that worked properly?

 

In order to have iDVD recognize 16:9 files created by Final Cut Express, it is necessary to run them through a progam called "anamorphicizer" which restores the anamorphic flag that FCE loses. In my tests I have tried both the original and the "anamorphicized" versions in Toast. Both behave the same way. Even the test movie which is recognized by Toast is recognized as 16:9 in both the original and anamorphicized versions!

 

This leads me to believe that Toast does not use the anamorphic code from the DV stream, but some other test is used, relying on some image characterstic that is lacking in the unrecognized media.

[tsantee]

So the problem is with the thumbnail image in the menu, right? I've noticed that at times, too, where the thumbnail is the squeezed 4:3 rather than the correct 16:9.

 

I have a workaround since I don't know any other way to do this. Set up to burn your DVD, ignore the thumbnail and choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu. When that is done clear the Video window, mount the image file, enter the Media Browser and choose DVD with the top button. Your mounted disc image will appear in the list. Go to the Title level with the lower button, select the Title(s) and drag them to the Video window. After Toast extracts the MPEGs from the disc image you'll have the 16:9 thumbnails.

[gp4rts]

So the problem is with the thumbnail image in the menu, right? I've noticed that at times, too, where the thumbnail is the squeezed 4:3 rather than the correct 16:9.

 

 

Actually the appearance of the thumbnail image is only the symptom; if the thumbnail looks right, then the recording is ok; if the thumbnail is 4:3, then the recording is wrong.

 

 

After further investigation, I have discovered the source of the problem: The first frame of the video file must contain an image (it can't be black). This is why some of my clips worked (mainly test clips that started with image content). My movies start with several seconds of black; these will not be recognized as 16:9. A single frame of image content at the start is all that is necessary for Toast to properly detect the 16:9 format of the source.

 

So it seems that at this point, in order for me to use Toast to make widescreen DVDs, I will have to find something to use as leader other than a black screen.

 

This may be a quirk of files generated by FCE; I would expect more discussion on this if it was a universal problem.

[gp4rts]

After further investigation, I have found that my explanation of the cause of the problem is not as I mentioned above.

 

This is definitely a quirk of FCE.

 

It is not that there must be image content in the first frame: it is just that the first frame not be subject to rendering. I was fooled by my attempt to "black out" the initial clip by applying filters, and this of course required rendering. So it was the rendering, not the "blackness" that tripped up Toast. The problem is not solved by using video generators (such as "slug" or color bars"), but by capturing black video recorded on the camera. Using this unrendered black video as the leader allows the exported media (all of it) to be recognized by Toast as 16:9. Apparently the render files lose whatever it is that Toast uses to identify the aspect ratio.

[tsantee]

Thank you for the excellent information and sharing what you've uncovered.

[tsantee]

Although I don't know the answer to your question, you can force Toast to encode widescreen by choosing the 16:9 aspect ration in the custom encoder window. Click the More button in the left panel, then choose the Encoding tab and then click the Custom button to enter the window.

[gp4rts]

Although I don't know the answer to your question, you can force Toast to encode widescreen by choosing the 16:9 aspect ration in the custom encoder window. Click the More button in the left panel, then choose the Encoding tab and then click the Custom button to enter the window.

 

What happens when I do that is I get a 4:3 "squished" image pillarboxed inside the TV's 16:9 screen.