Aspect Ratio headache

[Hairless Heart]

Hi

I have some widescreen movies recorded on my Tivo, which I'm gradually putting onto DVD using my Philips DVDR70 standalone recorder. They play in proper widescreen when watched on my TV, but if I put the disc into my PC, it plays in 4:3. When I look at the IFO files in IFOedit, they are tagged as being 4:3. Obviously, I can 'tweak' them back to 16:9 in IFOedit, but should I really have to do this?
I want to rip them to my PC and re-author them, but it seems a real hassle having to re-format them to the original aspect ratio.

Cheers

[FulciLives]

In the early days I used a DVD authoring program that would always flag the output as 4:3 even if the MPV/M2V video file was flagged at 16:9

I would use this DVD authoring program (SpruceUP was the name) to create a VIDEO_TS folder of DVD files (IFO, BUP, VOB, etc.) and then just use IFOEdit to change the main video to 16:9 (I would leave the menu at 4:3 since that was how the program created menus).

This proceedure worked very well with no issues.

So my point?

Yeah, I guess it is a bit of a "pain-in-the-ass" process ... but it does work and work well.

So if you cannot find a workaround ... I really wouldn't worry about it that much, i.e., just continue doing as you do with IFOEdit. When it is all said and done the IFOEdit process is not that long or difficult to do.

BTW if you RIP the DVD to your HDD and extract the M2V and AC-3 audio then you can change the aspect ratio of the M2V video file using PULLDOWN.EXE ... this simply will change the flagg(s) on the M2V from 4:3 to 16:9

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Hairless Heart]

Thanks for that. What method do you use now?

The thing that puzzles me most is that my telly knows to switch to widescreen when playing the DVD back, but the PC doesn't.

Cheers

[FulciLives]

Thanks for that. What method do you use now?

The thing that puzzles me most is that my telly knows to switch to widescreen when playing the DVD back, but the PC doesn't.

Cheers

If a WS 16x9 DVD is flagged as 4:3 it will look normal on a true 16x9 screen but will NOT look normal on a 4:3 screen be it a television or a computer.

Your problem is that your stand alone DVD recorder is flagging the DVD you record as 4:3 when it really is 16x9 content.

All you have to do is change the flags on the computer and re-author so it looks normal on ANY television it is played on (including the computer).

Some media player programs allow you to force 16x9 though so that might be in option for you (on the computer) but a 16x9 DVD flagged as 4:3 will never look normal on a standard 4:3 TV when played back on a stand alone DVD player ... unless you change the flags to 16x9

- John "FulciLives" Coleman