AVI to external DVD video parameter issues

[notodogg]

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong but I am having extreme difficulty encoding to DVD from an AVI file. The DVD plays fine on the OSX DVD player and in VLC, however when I burn in Toast and play on an external DVD player, the picture becomes distorted with half the screen as noise and the top half as messy video. Am I making an aspect mistake or am I missing a codec for quicktime perhaps? The vob files created do not play in quicktime, there is audio but a green screen instead of video. I will paste the specs by which I have been coding, but I am somehwat of a newbie and have gone through a nice stack of DVDs trying to get this right. Thanks so much for any feedback.

AVI
mpeg4, yuv420p, 656x272
ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 384 kb/s

Codes to:
mpeg2enc mpeg2, 656x496, 2700 kbps, 23.976 fps, no crop
NTSC Film 2700 kbit/sec
ac3, 48000 Hz, 384 kbps
have tried decoding w/quicktime and mplayer both,as well as with a letterbox and with 3:2 pull downs.

Is this a decode issue with quicktime (I do not have pro but I have many of the DIVX and avi codecs) or with my video parameters? Thanks again...

[tomlee59]

First, without the MPEG2 codec, QT can't play DVDs. That includes VOB files, so green screen playback is normal for your case.

Next, DVDs only support a certain set of resolutions. If you deviate from that officially supported set, you risk incompatibility. VLC is very forgiving, but many standalone players are not. So, reset your resolution to a DVD-standard one (like 720x480 for NTSC), and try again. You may or may not have to letterbox, depending on the nature of the source.

I recommend using one of the DVD presets; it appears that you overrode those settings. And if not, then reset them to a standard resolution, and you should be fine.