DVD Picture Off Center

[ABKron]

I'm trying to author a DVD. I have a regular DV file, 720x480, created by me in Premiere. I also have the same video in 640 x 480 format, compressed with H264. I created that file with VirtualDub, using the DV file as my source.

I tried burning this video to DVD with DVDStyler. I tried both files. In both cases, the menu I created looked fine, but the video itself did not fit on the screen. The edges were cut off.

I wondered if it was DVDStyler's fault, so I tried DVDFlick and got the same results (with the video -- I didn't try creating a menu in DVDFlick).

After a little research I found out this was due to overscan.

Okay, no problem. I went into VirtualDub, imported the DV file, resized to 576x432 (640 x 480 minus 10% vertically and horizontally) and letterboxed to 720x480.

I then exported that file (MPEG-4) and imported it into DVDStyler. I made sure everything was set to NTSC (it was, all default, didn't have to change anything), created an ISO, and then burned that to DVD, and popped it in my DVD player. Now a tiny bit of the video is still cut off vertically (no big deal, I'm sure it could be fixed by tweaking the resize filter a little in VirtualDub). Width-wise, the video is slightly more narrow than the screen, meaning that you can see some of the black borders on the right and left hand sides. This is no big deal, BUT, issue I have is that the picture is off center to the right. In other words, the black bar on the left is noticeably wider than the one on the right.

So, I'm trying to figure out why this would be, and how I can fix it.

I haven't tried burning the ISO in DVD Flick, mainly because:
1) I don't want to waste a DVD and time;
2) I expect that I will get the same results; and most importantly,
3) DVDStyler allows me to set custom start points for each chapter, whereas DVDFlick just created uniform chapters. DVDStyler also allows more flexibility to create custom menus which can jump to the custom chapters. So, I'd like to use that program if possible.

Any input?

Thanks in advance!

[Baldrick]

I'm pretty sure that the video is centered, watch the dvd-video on your computer with a software dvd player and see how the black borders looks. But the TV overscan may not be exact same on all sides.

(And don't export to mpeg4 in virtualdub because you will lose a lot of video quality, export to dv-avi again instead.)

[ABKron]

Thank you for the response, Baldrick. You're correct, when I open it with VLC it's fine; the black borders are equal in size. What's weird to me though is that I tried the DVD I burned on two different stand-alone DVD players on two different TVs, and it was off center in the same way in both cases. So, doesn't that seem like it's a problem with the DVD itself? Do you know of any way to fix this? Or to compensate?

[hech54]

Am I understanding this correctly?
You are converting DV to mpeg4....then to DVD?

[guns1inger]

Do you know of any way to fix this? Or to compensate?

Buy a new TV with a more balance overscan area ?
Perhaps get a service technician in to see if your TV can be adjusted to be more centred ?

There isn't actually a problem with the DVD or the video, it is with your hardware, Any change you make to the video will only reduce quality further than your already odd process does, and will make the disc play off centre on any TV that does not have the same problem as your TV.

[jagabo]

Overscan has been a property of televisions since their inception. It is part of the design because CRT based televisions have had a hard time keeping the image the right size, centered, linear and aligned as the temperature changes, as they age, etc. Overscan helps hide these issues. Everything you have ever watched on TV has been overscanned -- you just never noticed until now.

Modern LCD and plasma displays continue to overscan even though they aren't prone to the same sorts of problems (at least with digital inputs). This is because broadcasters don't worry about noise and garbage at the edges of the picture. (For example, closed caption text, by design, is encoded at the top of the frame which is normally hidden by overscan. VHS recordings have head switching noise at the bottom of the frame, again, hidden by overscan.) They "know" you can't see whats at the extreme edges because TVs overscan. So TV manufacturers have to overscan so you don't see that garbage. Some of the newer HDTVs have non-overscan options. We often see people here saying things like "there's a green bar at the left edge of my new HDTV's picture when watching x, is there something wrong with my TV?" or "there are some flashing white lines at the top of my HDTV, what's wrong with it?".

[ABKron]

Am I understanding this correctly?
You are converting DV to mpeg4....then to DVD?

Yes, but I suppose it would make more sense to resize and output back to DV using the Panasonic DV codec to retain quality. I was mainly just trying to fix this overscan problem when I converted to mpeg4 and didn't give it much thought.

[ABKron]

There isn't actually a problem with the DVD or the video, it is with your hardware, Any change you make to the video will only reduce quality further than your already odd process does, and will make the disc play off centre on any TV that does not have the same problem as your TV.

Okay, this is what I was trying to figure out. Are you 100% certain about this? As I said, I tried it on two totally different DVD players hooked up to two different TVs, and it was off center the same amount to the right on both, which led me to believe it wasn't just a problem with the DVD player and/or television.

[guns1inger]

You proved it to yourself by opening the DVD in a software player and seeing the centred video.

[filmboss80]

I don't think you realized that when you compressed the video to mpeg4 (which is completely unnecessary and unwarranted for making a DVD), a lot of video information was thrown out and is unrecoverable even if you reencode back to DV. You must go back to your DV source, and when the final project is edited in Premiere the way you like, export it as a DVD-compliant MPEG-2 file. Then use DVD Styler to simply author the DVD project (menus, chapter points, etc.), saving the project to your hard drive. Burn the resulting VIDEO_TS folder to a DVD disc using ImgBurn.

At no point should there be H264 or any other form of mpeg4 in the process.

[ABKron]

I don't think you realized that when you compressed the video to mpeg4 (which is completely unnecessary and unwarranted for making a DVD), a lot of video information was thrown out and is unrecoverable even if you reencode back to DV. You must go back to your DV source, and when the final project is edited in Premiere the way you like, export it as a DVD-compliant MPEG-2 file. Then use DVD Styler to simply author the DVD project (menus, chapter points, etc.), saving the project to your hard drive. Burn the resulting VIDEO_TS folder to a DVD disc using ImgBurn.

At no point should there be H264 or any other form of mpeg4 in the process.

No, I fully understand this. I can see how my post was ambiguous though, sorry. As I said earlier I still have the original DV file that came out of premiere. When I said "it would make more sense to resize and output back to DV using the Panasonic DV codec to retain quality", I meant that I would go through the same process I used to create the compressed versions of the video, using that original DV file as the input for VirtualDub. I wouldn't import one of the compressed versions into VirtualDub.

[filmboss80]

I am confused as to why you would be using VirtualDub at all, other than the resize step, which is likely causing more problems than it cures. The VirtualDub step is messing you up, because you are reencoding again, and still not coming out with a DVD-compliant file in the end. If you are authoring a DVD, your video format must be mpeg-2 (comprised of an m2v video stream and either wav or ac3 audio). H264 and MPEG4 in general are not DVD-compliant. VirtualDub, at its core, is an AVI tool -- not an MPEG2 encoder.

I want to be straight on this. You ARE trying to author a DVD and your original source footage is DV avi, right? If so, many of the tools you have chosen, as well as your methods of getting from point A to B, are wrong for the task.

You must export from Premiere timeline to MPEG-2 (staying at 720 x 480), then drop that MPEG-2 file into your DVD authoring program, with no other encoding. VirtualDub should never enter the picture, unless you are altering a raw DV-AVI clip before editing in Premiere.

It does not seem to me that any resizing was ever necessary. (Learn about the "TV Safe Area." No one ever frames their shots all the way to the edges.) Don't wreck your footage just to accommodate a particular TV monitor. You need to stick with 720 x 480.

If you must resize a particular clip, do it in VirtualDub as a DV-AVI clip all the way, and then drop that clip into the Premiere timeline.

[ABKron]

I am confused as to why you would be using VirtualDub at all, other than the resize step, which is likely causing more problems than it cures.

The resizing step is the reason for my using VirtualDub at this point. As I said, when I use DVDFlick or DVDStyler to make an ISO file out of the regular 720 x 480 DV AVI that came out of Premiere I have problems with overscan (and I suspect that I would have the same problem even if I exported to a different format from Premiere.) So I'm using VirtualDub to shrink it by 10% and letterbox. After that it fits on the screen, but it's off center (at least on the two TVs/DVD players I tried it on.)

The VirtualDub step is messing you up, because you are reencoding again, and still not coming out with a DVD-compliant file in the end. If you are authoring a DVD, your video format must be mpeg-2 (comprised of an m2v video stream and either wav or ac3 audio). H264 and MPEG4 in general are not DVD-compliant. VirtualDub, at its core, is an AVI tool -- not an MPEG2 encoder.

I don't know... DVDFlick and DVDStyler haven't had any trouble using the regular DV file, H264 file, or MPEG4 file to create an ISO file out of. The video and audio work fine, the issue was just the overscanning, and now the off-center picture.

I want to be straight on this. You ARE trying to author a DVD and your original source footage is DV avi, right?

Correct.

If so, many of the tools you have chosen, as well as your methods of getting from point A to B, are wrong for the task. You must export from Premiere timeline to MPEG-2 (staying at 720 x 480), then drop that MPEG-2 file into your DVD authoring program, with no other encoding. VirtualDub should never enter the picture, unless you are altering a raw DV-AVI clip before editing in Premiere.

Well, as I said, when I make an ISO out of the original 720 x 480 has overscan problems (edges cut off on TV screen), but this is fixed when I resize/letterbox it in VirtualDub and take that resized video into the DVD authoring software instead of using the original file.

It does not seem to me that any resizing was ever necessary. (Learn about the "TV Safe Area." No one ever frames their shots all the way to the edges.) Don't wreck your footage just to accommodate a particular TV monitor. You need to stick with 720 x 480.

I don't know. The original video that I created was supposed to be for an internet-only release, so I didn't worry about keeping things in the TV safe area. Maybe that was a bad call on my part, but what's done is done. I now have a 720 x 480 DV file, which, after resizing in VirtualDub as described above, fits on the screen. I have no problem with there being a little bit of black around the edges (which I can probably fix anyways by tweaking the resizing a little), but it's off center, and I'm trying to figure out if it's just a coincidence that both of the TVs/DVD players display it the same exact way (slightly off center to the right), i.e. have the same bad calibration. I guess it probably is, as guns1inger said. I just wanted to see if there were any dissenting opinions.

(I hope I'm not trying anyone's patience here. I sincerely appreciate the help!)

[jagabo]

You can use FitCD to generate an AviSynth script for overscan compensation. You can open the script with your MPEG encoder to avoid any intermediate encoding with VirtualDub.

[tomlee59]

If it's properly centered with all of your software players, ignore the display centering of your CRT-based TV. It's not completely out of the question for two such TVs to exhibit similar off-centering.

Here's a simple test: When you play commercially authored DVDs, do you notice any error in centering? Look, for example, at studio logos, etc., that should be centered. I would not waste time rejiggering your encodes until you have verified that there really is a problem. "Voting" with random equipment isn't the answer; perform a scientific test.

[filmboss80]

Of course DVD Flick will "handle" H264 and MPEG4 because it reencodes them to DVD-compliant video streams. To understand DVD compliance, please click on WHAT IS > DVD in the upper left column of this website. It will tell you that the VOB files within a DVD structure are MPEG-2 based--not DV, not H264, and not other forms of MPEG4. Programs like DVD Flick CONVERT your source videos. My suggestion was to stay within the DV AVI realm of your source files, making no other conversions until you are finished editing. (Overcan resizing can be done in every version of Premiere that I'm familiar with. I don't know which one you're using, but I don't think VirtualDub is needed.) After editing, you would make a single conversion to MPEG-2, which thereafter remains unchanged throughout the DVD authoring stage. (The resulting VOB files incorporate, but do not re-encode, your MPEG-2 file.) Your current methods, however, involve several unnecessary steps to re-compress and re-encode the video, with highly compressed codecs at various intervals, which incrementally degrades the image quality with every encode. If you want to continue doing it your way, then go right ahead. But don't come back here complaining that your DVD image quality is blocky or blurry or muddy looking.

[jagabo]

DV sources are likely interlaced or telecined film. Resizing interlace video without interlace aware resizing algorithms will lead to artifacts.

[MysticE]

The resizing step is the reason for my using VirtualDub at this point. As I said, when I use DVDFlick or DVDStyler to make an ISO file out of the regular 720 x 480 DV AVI that came out of Premiere I have problems with overscan

In DVDFlick you can add overscan borders.

[guns1inger]

In future shoot your video with overscan in mind, just as they do for television. Then it isn't an issue.