Wide Screen DVD does not play widescreen on some players

[mzellers]

I've just made a wide screen DVD of a choral concert put on by my duaghter's school district. On my new Sony DVD Recorder, it plays correctly, but on my older Phillips DVD player (751), I see it in 4:3 instead of 16:9.

I used Adobe Premiere, bbMPEG and DVDAuthor GUI to make a simple DVD (no menus but I do have chapter marks). It took me a number of tries (I kept getting overrun errors so I dialed down the bitrate until it worked). The whole program was about 1 hour and 5 minutes. The final DVD image was only about 3.367GB, which seemed to me like I might have compressed it more than neccessary, but with lower compression I was getting errors.

Could it be that the bitrate is just too high for the older DVD player and that I needed to compress it more?

[HARRYSPADGE]

Is your DVD player set up to give a 16:9 output ?
Take a look in the settings menu and check it, this may be where your problem lies ?

[smearbrick1]

Are you playing this on a widescreen tv? If not, it's all 4:3 just letterboxed. If you are playing this on a standard definition tv, you may need to adjust the settings of your dvd player (the older one) to playback on a 4:3 set.

[INFRATOM]

DVD players have a default video setting for aspect ratios. They are available in menu setup. It may transform the aspect ratios. If it is school player most probably they don't change and go with one setting, most likely they don't have wide screen. 2nd question each dvd player has a max bitrate better check the specs, I think max bit rate is 8000 for dvd but some may not show over 6000 or freeze.

[mzellers]

I'm watching on a normal TV, so I want to see it letterboxed. It works fine with the Sony (I see the wide screen letterboxed) but on the Phillips I see just the middle of the picture.

I watch letterbox DVDs all the time on the Phillips, which lead me to think that I may have just tried to push it too far.

I can't tell from the documentation I could find on the Philips web site what the max bitrate the DVD Player can handle.

Mark Z.

[INFRATOM]

On this site if you can find it under dvd players it may give you max bit rate it can handle , if you couldn't play your best commercial dvd (best picture and fast movements) you have to see if it plays well on your phillips then check the properties and check the bit rate you know at least it plays that well enough.

[Cornucopia]

Letterbox "handling" capability has NOTHING to do with bitrate--on ANY DVD player.

If your program was 1hr5min, you should be able to set your bitrates as ~follows (assuming COMPLIANT DVD players and APPROPRIATE tools):

Audio (AC3 or MP2): 224kbps

Video (MPEG2): 8000kbps - 9000kbps CBR, or
AVG-9000kbps, MIN-3000kbps, MAX-9500kbps VBR

The bit about DVD players not working with the upper limit of the DVD spec on bitrate is old hat. According to their licensing, if a player can't play the whole range of bitrates for DVD, it's a BAD player and shouldn't be sold (and shouldn't be getting a license).

More to the point of what you need...
How are you capturing, editing and authoring?
Have you told Premiere (or does it know automatically) that your footage is widescreen. Can your camera capture anamorphically?
If not, you'll be cropping/squeezing to create an artificial widescreen, which would give you a good deal less quality (especially if you don't manage the interlacing correctly).

You mention bbMpeg, but no audio encoder. Are you leaving it as PCM?
If so, this is probably the main reason you can't go with higher bitrates as it is soaking up all the usable space on the disc. Not a good idea, especially with home-made footage which is usually noiser, shakier, less well lit, etc. (This puts a strain on the encoder's output quality)

Check to see if DVDAuthorGUI can set the 16:9 Anamorphic flag (or at least retain from the encode). If not, that may be (one of) your problem.

Give us more info, then we can help you better.

HTH,

Scott

[mzellers]

Scott,

Thanks for the reply. I built the Premiere project in 16:9 mode and it plays successfully in widescreen on the Sony (and on any computer I have tried it on).

IIRC, I finally settled on a bitrate of about avg 7000kbps, max 8000kbps.

Perhaps the audio is the problem...I thought it was MP2 after coming out of bbMPEG but I'd have to check to be sure.

Mark Z.

[liquid217]

dvdauthorgui will retail the AR flag from the encoder. You can look in the DVDAuthorGUI log when it is multiplexing to see what the flag is set to. You can use restream to verify this (against the m2v file and against the authored vob file).

[Cornucopia]

Ok, let's assume that the export from Premiere is ok ( 16:9anamorphic 720x480NTSC ). How did you set bbMpeg?

N.B.>>I wouldn't use computer DVD player app playback as the best "compliance" benchmark. Use IFOEdit, Restream, other mpeg stream viewer apps to find out if it's really authored correctly.


You know, it could just be that your Philips player is set wrong...

Scott

[SLK001]

The MAXIMUM bitrate playable on each and every DVD player is 9800kbps. PERIOD!

[manono]

You might want to qualify that a bit, as the figure you gave is for the video only. When you add in audio, subs, and overhead, the max goes up to 10080 kbps:

https://www.videohelp.com/dvd

About halfway down.

[SLK001]

Right... I meant 9800kbps is the max video bitrate. With everything bundled up, the max is 10080kbps - just like you said.

[borax]

If you are using the "normal" dvdauthor distribution (like included in dvdauthorgui) the default for 16:9 is panscan and letterboxed (not or). Therefore it depends on the player, how this "double definition" is handled. That's exactly the reason, why I have changed this default for 16:9 to "nopanscan" (= always letterboxed) within the dvdauthor source code. You may find this version of dvdauthor here: https://www.videohelp.com/~gfd/edcounter.php?file=download/dvdauthor_winbin.zip

Another method to change this behavior is to use ifoedit prior to burning and set the 'Video attributes' to 'Automatic Letterboxed' (double click on 'VTS_X Video' and untag 'Automatic Pan&Scan') for all your title sets.

This could help, but as the other authoring programs have the same problem it's not sure...

[mzellers]

I found MPEG-2 Validator v1.4.0.131 and ran that on the multiplexed version (i.e. the combined mpeg stream, rather than the individual components that I used to burn the DVD) and it flagged the following:

*Vertical Size = 480
*Aspect Ratio = 16:9
*Frame Rate = 29.97 fps
*DCT Type = Frame
*Average Bitrate = 6600 Kbps

*Possibly 949 Samples Clipped on Left Channel...!!

*Possibly 27 Samples Clipped on Right Channel...!!
*Left Channel RMS Level = -13.0 dB

*Difference Left-Right RMS Level = 3.1 dB
 
Duration Difference from Video to Audio = -3920 msec

Compliance Test: Fail!!

So, is 6000 the real speed limit? Why does it seem to complain about the height of 480 pixels and the frame rate of 29.97?

I tried IFOEdit and I did see the Pan and Scan & Letterbox flags set, so I guess that might be the real issue. I'll try playing with the settings on the player.


Mark Z.

[mzellers]

I found the setting I needed on the DVD player and so now it does play in widescreen. I am a little concerned by the "errors" reported by the MPEG validator. Should I be doing something differently?

Mark Z.

[Abond]

Don't worry, in fact MPEG Validator have in mind totaly other type of compliancy - it is not designed to validate DVD compliancy.

[HARRYSPADGE]

Why does it seem to complain about the height of 480 pixels and the frame rate of 29.97?

Mark Z.

Take a look here at the second comment !

https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=MPEG_Validator