TMPGEnc 4 problems: thin black pillarboxes & menu BGM resetting

[DragonQ]

Hi, I've made a 16:9 DVD9 project in TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 with 4 tracks (190 minutes @ 5.3Mbps, source is 1080p25). Generally it works fine but I have two separate issues:

1) If I set the output to be 720x576 (which is all I've ever used when making DVDs in the past), it seems to actually make a 704x576 video, squash it slightly and pad to 720x576 using thin black bars at the sides. This means the aspect ratio is slightly off. If I use 704x576, the aspect ratio is fine. I've tried setting the 1080p25 tracks to "Pixel 1:1" and "Display 16:9" but neither fix the problem. It's not very important since I can just use 704x576 but is there any way to stop this happening? The authoring programs I've used in the past didn't have this problem when using 720x576 video.

2) I've got a top menu based on the "Blue 3 (Wide)" template but no track menus. If I set this top menu to have background music looping every 33s (which is the length of the audio), it plays fine when the menu loads but the audio track restarts every time any of the 4 tracks are highlighted (not selected) using the arrow keys on the DVD remote. Is there any way to stop this from happening?

Thanks.

[davexnet]

704 is still DVD standard and is valid. In the old TmpgEnc 2.5, you used to be able to set "video arrange method" to
"no margin (keep aspect ratio)" and this would encode to the full 720 width. I'm not sure if there is such a setting in
Tmpgenc Xpress.

I've got no idea about point 2.

[DragonQ]

Thanks for the reply.

There isn't any "full size (no border)" option in TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 but there is a similar option in TMPGEnc XPress 4. However, this option is also wrong. Instead of stretching the video and then adding black bars to make it fit the 720x576 frame, it stretches it and then crops it to fit the 720x576 frame, which is worse.

The only way I've found to actually get a perfect 720x576 video that keeps the aspect ratio correct is to use "center (custom size)" in TMPGEnc XPress and then choose 720x576.

Haven't been able to solve question 2 yet.

[gyoshi]

Regarding question 2, this has to do with the fact that the menu template you've selected is what they call a dynamic menu. Any menu were the tracks/chapters share a single thumbnail (where highlighting the track/chapter changes the thumbnail) is a dynamic menu and will reload the music with each thumbnail change.

I believe what is happening is that each variation of the menu state (track 1 highlighted, track 2 highlighted, etc.) is a separate video file (which is what menus are really), thus the music has to start from the beginning each time the menu changes. This is also why you can't have music continue from the top menu to a chapter menu without it restarting -- the top and track menus are separate video files.

To solve your problem, the only solution is to use a non-dynamic template where all tracks/chapters have their own thumbnails.