Picture Size Shrinks

[JazzMessenger]

Hello:

 

I just got the Roxio easy VHS to DVD for Mac, and I have been trying to convert my old family home movies from VHSc tapes to DVD...I can convert them no problem, then I burn them using the MAC program 'Burn' which converts them into mpg so I can burn onto DVD...When I play the DVD back on my big screen TV, the picture on the screen is a small box, with black all around it, cutting off a lot of the picture....How do I fix this?

-Alex

[tsantee]

Does all the picture appear when you play what was captured on the Mac? If so, any cropping is due to the application you used to make your DVD. It is normal for a 640 x 480 picture to be surrounded by black on a 1920 x 1080 TV screen, but it is not normal for that picture to be missing any of its content.

[JazzMessenger]

Hi Tsantee, even when I played the DVD back on my computer, I get the box around the film..I attached a screen shot..Thanks again!!

[JazzMessenger]

It's the same on the TV as well..

[tsantee]

It's the same on the TV as well..

It appears that the view on the Mac is zoomed rather than actual size. Was the video that wide when captured by the Roxio device? It should have been a 4:3 ratio. If the source video was wider than 4:3 (such as 16:9) the Roxio device would add black bars to the top and bottom to make it 4:3, but would not crop off any of the video. What you're indicating is that black bars were added on all sides when the video DVD was created. That is an issue with the software that encoded the MPEG 2 video for DVD. You say that application is called Burn. I have no experience with that application.

 

Open the original captured video in QuickTime Player and choose Show Movie Inspector from the QuickTime Player Windows menu. What are the video's specs? If it reports that the format is Apple Intermediate Codec, then save the video as h.264 and use that instead. I strongly recommend always using the Medium quality setting with the Easy VHS to DVD for Mac because that uses h.264 and resolves a lot of problems without any noticeable quality loss.

[JazzMessenger]

Setting the quality to Medium solved the problem!!!! Thank you so much!!