Widesceen conversion problems

[Nyquist]

When I try to convert my AVI files to Mpeg 2 to be burned onto a DVD I loose the aspect ratio of my 16:9 movies. I have tried TMPGEnc using 16:9 in all available aspect ratio choices but it still stretches my movies. Is there another program to convert my movies or is there a way to add black bars to the top and bottom of my movie?

[bugster]

In TmpGenc, select aspect ratio 16:9 as you want, then on the advanced tab, set Video arrange method as full screen (keep aspect ratio). This should give you what you need.

[Ejoc]

what bugster said will work, and is probably the easiest way to do it.

AVISynth can resize and add borders, more complicated, but faster in my experience.

[Nyquist]

Bugster, I set that in TMPGEnc and it still comes out wrong, so i'll try the AVIsynth if anyone else has any ideas on how to do it I willing to try different things.

Thanks

[bugster]

Forget to say, in TmpGenc, also on the advanced tab, is source aspect ratio set as 1:1 (VGA)? It should always be set this way for avi's.

[Vejita-sama]

Source Aspect Ratio: 1:1 (VGA)
Output Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Video Arrange Method: Full screen (preserve aspect ratio)

Three other things:

1) Anamorphic DVDs are ONLY supported at 720x480/576. If you are using a different resolution you HAVE to letterbox the video.

2) You MOST author with a program that can insert the 16:9 flag in the IFO.

3) If you divx/avi was not correctly encoded (and most are not) the aspect ratio can be off resulting in some small letter boxing. However if the divx was encoded with black bars (ie. letterboxing) as PART OF the divx file, TMPGenc will treat that as video and really screwup the aspect ratio of the video. If so you'll need to crop out the black bars prior to encode (either from within TMPGenc or frameserve with avisynth/Vdub)