16:9 format DVDs

[willrob]

While FCP and even iPhoto will create 16:9 widescreen movies, neither iDVD nor Toast 7 seems to be able to create a DVD in this format. I don't have DVDSP, but I assume it can do this. Is there any other (i.e-less expensive software) that enables this?

What I want to do is create a slideshow in iPhoto that is 16:9 format. iPhoto allows this, but iDVD doesn't. I suspect it's not setting the 16:9 format, so the DVD player only displays the limited 4:3 porportions. Is there a way to fill a widescreen TV?

[Frobozz]

Toast 7 supports 16:9. It automatically chooses this from existing 16:9 video or you can also force it using the custom encoding settings. So try the 16:9 Toast setting and see if that gets you what you want.

Personally, I suggest using Motion Pictures bundled with Toast instead of iPhoto to create your 16:9 slide show. There is a 16:9 preference in Motion Pictures. Motion Pictures also has a media browser that displays your iPhoto library so there is no export you need to do from that library.

[willrob]

Both Toast and iDVD allow me to place a 16:9 video into them. But the Menus for the DVDs remain 4:3 aspect ratio. My concern was with the 16:9 markers that would trigger a set top DVD player to fill the screen (at least when a film is playing). In other words, I guess the menu will be a 4:3 square in the center of the screen; but when a title is selected, I want it to fill the screen rather than be letterboxed within the menu's format. Is this what will happen? I don't have a widescreen TV to test it on.

I agree the Toast Motion Pictures is better than the iPhoto "Ken Burns Effect."

[Frobozz]

I haven't paid attention to whether Toast displays a 16:9 menu when using 16:9 source. I'll look into this. I've seen that the image from the video that shows in the menu can sometimes be 4:3 and sometimes 16:9 depending on whether Toast recognizes the source as being 16:9.

Choose Save as disc image from the File menu and then mount the image file to see if the video has the 16:9 format. If the video is 16:9 and the menu is 4:3 try this:

With the image file mounted, open a new Toast window and click the Media button on the left. Choose DVD in the upper button and your DVD will appear in the media browser. Now select the Title you want and drag it to the Toast Video window. Since it is widescreen Toast will show the extracted MPEG as widescreen in the menu.

You can choose Save as disc image again to see if the menu now appears as 16:9 along with the video.

[rumplestiltskin]

What about using iMovie with a wide-screen DV project? Turn off the KB effect (if it bothers you). Send it over to iDVD and you're done. Leave off the music and you can start/stop the "movie" (slideshow) as required.

[willrob]

I did a simple test.

I created a 16:9 slideshow in iPhoto and exported it as a movie.

I imported this into both iDVD and Toast 7. I added a small slide show to the iDVD project as well (my final aim is to have a play-on- insert DVD that will also have a menu with the individual photos organized into slideshow albums). I forgot to do this in Toast, but assume it would work just as well there.

I then saved as disc images from both applications and then mounted those images. Using DVDPlayer, I opened the VIDEO-TS folders of each and hit play.

Results:

The iDVD disk plays the movie immediately, as planned, but it displays it within a 4:3 aspect ratio, placing letter-boxed black borders at the top and bottom of the window. If I hit the menu button, I am taken to the menu and can choose to view the slideshow.

The Toast 7 disk image also starts its movie when I hit play (duplicating what would happen when the disk is inserted into a DVD player). But its movie window opens into a much wider format, placing black borders on the sides of the movie rather than on top and bottom. Hitting the menu button also takes be to the menu where I assume I could select a slideshow or other title. But going back to the menu reduces the window to the 4:3 aspect ratio again, which I have to suspect is the space a slideshow would display within.

So while I now know more than I did previously, I still don't really know what happens on a wide screen TV. I'm guessing that Toast 7 will fill the screen with its wider format movie window, but have its main menu window centered as a TV Safe shape. Also the slideshows can't display in wide screen format, but only within the 4:3 aspect window.

[Frobozz]

Have you downloaded the freeware app myDVDEdit? It can tell you what aspect ratio flags are on the VOBs of the disc image. It also allows you to edit those flags if you copy the VIDEO_TS to the hard drive and change the permissions to allow Read & Write. It takes some time to figure it all out.

Here's some myDVDEdit help. After selecting your VIDEO_TS folder click any of the VTS files on the left. Then click the IFO tab in the lower part of the window. You'll see the Aspect ratio for that VTS. The display window can be scaled to show 4:3 or 16:9 by click the ratio at the top. For a 16:9 video that will play properly on both 16:9 and 4:3 sets choose 16:9 auto Pan&Scan and Letterbox as the aspect flag.

[AntnyMD]

Widescreen flagging of 16:9 DVDs is for 4x3 televisions only. On a widescreen 16x9 tv, your television monitor (via the settings you choose) manipulates whether or not the picture is stretched to fill the rectangular shape of the screen, or displays in a square in the middle of the rectangular shape. The only time these settings change "automatically" is when I switch back and forth between HDTV channels and the rest.

[willrob]

MyDVDEdit tells me that both VIDEO_TS folders are flagged as 16:9 (assuming that the little black box above the display window is where that is reported).

But if I select the menus, and the IFO tab, both disc menus have a 4:3 aspect. Apparently I can change this to 16:9, which will stretch the menu, distorting text a bit, but possibly it might be bearable.

Selecting the First Play movies, I can't seem to get any information; but VTS 1 (which displays those movies) shows that the Toast version is flagged as 16:9 auto pan&scan letterbox, but the iDVD version is 4:3, both for the movie and the still image slideshow.

I can change the setting for the iDVD movie to 16:9, but it stretches the image to do this, and looks weird. The same is true for changing the slideshow ratio to 16:9—horizontal stretching which makes everyone look fat (not that some of them weren't fat in the first place).

I noticed back in iPhoto, when I was first exporting the movie, that the options were for "16:9 Widescreen" or "4:3 iDVD, TV. " I suspect that no matter where the 16:9 flag is set (Final Cut prove, iMovieHD, etc) iDVD can't produce a widescreen DVD—not in its menus and not in the films linked from those menus.

To be sure, I'll burn a disk of each of these and see what happens on my TV. It still won't tell me what will happen on a widescreen TV, but I might be able to tell how the letterboxing will be handled.

[willrob]

AntnyMD:

But aren't I better of creating a movie in the 16:9 ratio so that I can control what gets clipped off screen? If I do a normal slideshow movie (or any other 4:3 aspect movie), won't the "stretching" to fill the entire widescreen cause potentially important parts of the image to be off screen? Or is the stretching a sort of distortion, keeping the same hight and widening the sides—similar to the way myDVDEdit displays the aspect changes from 4:3 to 16:9 when the movie isn't 16:9 to start with?

[dun4cheap]

The 16:9 Menu is a complicate beast. Only more expensive DVD authoring tools are capable of producing 16:9 Menus that will diplsay correctly. The problem occurs when you attempt to play back a 16:9 DVD menu on a 4:3 display in letter box mode. The button highlights do not adjust properly. I have heard that this is fixed in programs like LE 7 however I know it does not work correclty in Studio 9, 10 or most over inexpensive editors.

What I have done as a work around is I have authored and edited my clips in Studio 9. I set it up for 16:9 including the menu but when I am done authoring the disc, I force the the 16:9 menus to be displayed at 4:3 Pan Scan. This way it highlights properly and my video clips/slide shows play back in 16:9. If you intend on using this disc solely on a 16:9 WS TV then you do not need to go through this.

Good luck,

[AntnyMD]

AntnyMD:
But aren't I better of creating a movie in the 16:9 ratio so that I can control what gets clipped off screen?

In either aspect ratio, you can control what is displayed within the available frame. What takes more consideration is how will content designed to display on a 16:9 television will display on a 4:3 television.

If I do a normal slideshow movie (or any other 4:3 aspect movie), won't the "stretching" to fill the entire widescreen cause potentially important parts of the image to be off screen?

The stretching of a 4:3 aspect movie to fill a 16:9 screen with distort the image but nothing will be clipped by the 16:9 screen. The two 16:9 televisions I own have other display modes that do clip off parts of the image (to varying degrees) in an effort to keep aspect ratio with minimal or no distortion, but these modes are ultimately unpleasurable to look at.

Or is the stretching a sort of distortion, keeping the same hight and widening the sides—similar to the way myDVDEdit displays the aspect changes from 4:3 to 16:9 when the movie isn't 16:9 to start with?

The trouble with myDVDedit is it only rewrites the .ifo with 16:9 flags, and whatever changes you make with it display as expected in Apple DVD Player. Settop DVD players commonly refer to the flag in the program stream of the video title sets and not the .ifo -- especially important when a DVD contains mixed 16:9 and 4:3 content -- so any changes you make in this program will be for computers only.

[willrob]

This is interestingly complicated. The perfect thing to take my mind of Christmas shopping.

So I burned two test DVDs. One from the Toast disk, one from the iDVD disk.

As expected the start-up movie displayed differently (this is on a normal TV, not widescreen). The Toast film (which displayed a wide frame in DVDPlayer) fit the width of the screen with letterbox black bars top and bottom—similar to a commercial DVD of a widescreen movie. When I pushed the menu button, I was taken to the menu where the slideshow was selectable. When I played the slideshow, the photos filled the whole screen, top to bottom, with black only on the right and left side as needed. Also of importance, the start-up movie was also available as a title on the menu; so one could go back to viewing it without ejecting and reinserting the disk.

The iDVD version played the start-up movie full screen, cropping off the side of the 16:9 format video. Pressing the menu button brought me to the main menu (which looks a hell of a lot better than the built in menus Toast 7 offers). Here I could select the slide show, but not the start-up movie. I would have had to add it to the main menu AND to the start-up movie pane in the disk map—possibly doubling the disk space used. The slideshow displayed the images at half the size of the Toast DVD. The images were centered on screen, with black on all four sides.

I'm still not sure what would happen on a widescreen TV. I'm guessing the Toast movie would fill the screen. But possibly the Toast photos would get clipped at the top and bottom. I have no set to test it on.

Now if there were only some way to use the iDVD menus in Toast, but with the Toast movie and slideshow. Maybe copying a iDVD version to the desktop and swapping vob files.... probably not going to work.

I may end up making two versions of the project: a 4:3 ratio done in iDVD, and a 16:9 version done in Toast. In both cases I would use Motion Picture to create the start-up movie. Then on Christmas eve, I would be able to test both disks on a widescreen TV and see what happens.

[AntnyMD]

Then on Christmas eve, I would be able to test both disks on a widescreen TV and see what happens.

Oh, is Santa dropping an HDTV down the chimney this year? Someone's been very good!

[willrob]

No I haven't been good. If he drops one, it would probably be on my head.

The DVD is to be a xmas present for my mother. I've taken all of my late father's photos of their early life together (before my sister and I came along and ruined everything), scanned them, cleaned them up and repaired where necessary. My mom is currently living with my sister and her husband; they have a wide screen TV.

Since my mother's eyes aren't great, she has trouble looking at prints or a standard photo album. So I thought that a DVD displayed on a large format screen would be a good solution for her. Thus the First Play movie—so it's as technically simple as possible. Granted she has to figure out which of the thirty remote controls turns on the DVD player, and which turns on the TV and switches to the DVD input. Neither my sister nor her husband have a good grasp of that yet after two years with this set up. Then if she wants to look at the individual pictures one at a time, that's also an option.

Aside from the technical problems I expect to have, the whole process has been filled with melancholy, as I've been spending the past two weeks looking at images of a time long gone, a history of my parent's lives I can never really know. My mother is 96, so were talking about photos dating back to 1917. My father was an avid amateur photographer, processing his own film, making his own prints, capturing every occasion that seemed important or just fun: birthdays, days in the country, vacations, xmas morning. It's sad that he and virtually everyone else in these pictures, except my mother, has passed away. So now that I think of it, she'll probably hate this as a xmas present; it will make her cry...I'm a horrible son. This is why Santa is going to drop that TV on my head.

[Frobozz]

Bless you, you're a good son. Yes she will cry. Maybe it will be too easy to give her an overdose. I think a 5-minute limit per viewing session might be good. (I have a 5-minute Motion Pictures/Toast video DVD of the first year of my grandson's life and it is very powerful). Stop after five minutes of viewing and let her tell some stories. Have a tape recorder going.

It's going to be wonderful!

[willrob]

I attempted to use the iDVD menus with the Toast files. I copied both VIDEO_TS folders to the hard drive, then looked at the respective vobs. Both test disks had the same number of vobs and the same video in each. I moved the Toast versions into the iDVD version. I then used DVDPlayer to preview the VIDEO_TS media.

The iDVD menu appeared (I was using a static one—the open book with a photo in the drop zone; not sure what I'd get if I used a motion menu). Unfortunately, the toast movie icon (recall that Toast adds the start-up movie to the menu, while iDVD does not) is placed over the drop zone photo.

More importantly: the start-up movie no longer played as 16:9. It now played like the iDVD version of the 16:9 source did. And the slide show image, while displaying much larger (as in the Toast disc) raced through so rapidly that I could barely tell what they were. The menu button for the slideshow was the toast button and not the iDVD theme button.

Perhaps editing everything in myDVDEdit would help, but it looks like this isn't going to work. Since the Toast themes are Photoshop files, I can edit one to have the same Book backdrop as the iDVD theme, but getting the buttons to appear where I want them will take a bit of figuring out. My first attempt achieved the correct book image, but again the movie button was placed over the photo. For this theme, I preferred the iDVD style of having only a name to click on for each slideshow instead os a thumbnail image as Toast does it. Perhaps I can trick Toast into also doing this.

[Frobozz]

There is an iDVD 5 forum at discussions.apple.com. Maybe some of those folks can help you figure out how to get a 16:9 slide show movie with iDVD.

[willrob]

A search of the iDVD forum turned up this link:

http://capital2.capital.edu/admin-staff/dalthoff/widescreen.html

HAv to experiment to see how well it works.

[myDVDEdit]

I explain the Aspect Video Attribute here, on chapter 5.2.1, and there.

You right AntnyMD, I only change the .IFO video attribute, and not the MPEG2 stream aspect flag, but many DVDPlayer use the IFO attribute. It's not for computer only.

I will propose in a future version to fixe the MPEG2 stream too.

The problem with menu is more difficulte because the subpictures (used to draw the buttons) are always expanded to the screen size, so the stream must contains a subpicture for the 16:9 format + a second subpicture for the pan&scan or the letterbox format. In the case of iDVD, the menu subpicture are created to the 4:3 format. It will only works with the 16:9 aspect value. You can't use letterbox or pan&scan in the menu of a DVD created with iDVD. Of course, with this option, the menu will be correct in one screen format, and distord in the other.

The best solution for menus would be 16:9 auto pan&scan. I will propose in a future version (much much later) a option to automaticaly create a pan&scan subpicture from the normal subpicture.

Jérôme

[willrob]

Coming up for air to report that the Anamorphicizer linked to in my previous post does work, at least on my monitor. I dropped my iPhoto 16:9 slideshow movie on it, and then placed that into iDVD. Then when I preview the disk, the movie plays in a window that is labeled "widescreen" and has greenish letterboxing at the top and bottom. Having never encountered this before, I'm betting it will display differently on a TV screen. What will it do on a widescreen TV? Who knows? I'll try burning a test disk tomorrow, for whatever good that will do me.

I think Jérôme is probably right to assume any attempt to get the menus to display in widescreen would result in a distorted image. As for the slideshows, even though the Toast version produces larger images, it's quite possible they end up getting cropped on a widescreen TV. Or would they automatically be scaled to the size of the screen?

[AntnyMD]

myDVDEdit[/url]] will propose in a future version to fixe the MPEG2 stream too.
Jérôme

Fantastic!

[willrob]

Plodding along;

I used Toast's Motion Picture to assemble the slideshow movie—303 photos, many with zooms, pans, etc. MP is a little lame as it doesn't provide a real grid for aligning the beginning and ending image. So if you want both the start and end image to have the same zoom but also want them to be in exactly the same spot (to basically create a still image of a close up of only part of the image), it takes a lot of trial and error to line the two frames up.

On the plus side, when you select Widescreen DV as your output, and turn on the video safe overlay, it's in a widescreen format. I made some title cards in Photoshop and added them to the MP images, so I could dissolve in and out of them. Although this could be done in FCP or iMovie just as easily. I didn't add any music, choosing to do that in iMovie where I'd have more control.

Once the movie was exported (approximately three hours for a 35 minute finished film), I imported it into iMovie (approximately 40 minutes) and then added music. I trimed some of the images to fit to the music better, and even removed a couple. When I was satisfied, I set chapter markers at each title card. This proved useless, since I was using this as a start up movie, where chapters don't work. And since I "Shared" the finished product as a DV movie, rather than export to iDVD, I'm not sure the chapter markers are preserved anyway.

Before importing into iDVD I dropped the film onto Anamorphicizer, and then placed the resulting reference movie into the start up slot in the DVD's map. Previewing displayed the desired widescreen image. Without Anamorphicizer the film previews as 4:3 aspect and woule likely play that when when burned to disc..

Hitting menu at any point took me to the main screen where the slideshows could be selected. Thinking all was well, I creted a disk image (approximately two to three hours). When I used DVDPlayer to play the disk image, I discoverd that unlike the iDVD preview, whenever I left the start-up movie and went to the main screen, instead of the first slideshow being the highlighted one, the last was highlighted. And when I selected a slideshow and was taken to the next screen, the return button was highlighted rather than the title on that screen.

iDVD's preview gives the impression that the first title will be the highlighted one and moving to the next screen will have the slideshow highlighted. I can't figure out how to change this behavior.

And now its 1:30 a.m. and I'm going to sleep (approximaely 8 hours)

[willrob]

Finally! Finished the DVD.

I attempted to find out from the Apple discussion boards how to rectify the menu problem I mentioned in my last post. No responses...

Since I had placed the buttons in the order I wanted them highlighted (top to bottom), I couldn't. and still can't, figure out why the order was reversed. Finally I looked at the map of the Project and sure enough the last item on the menu was listed as the first. Since there is no way to move things around on the map, I deleted the link and re-created it. And now the highlighting is as I wish: first item at the top of the menu is the default highlight.

I was surprised to discover that when it came time to create a new disk image that iDVD only needed to create the slideshows over; the mpeg compression for the start-up movie did not need to be redone. Nor the contents of the DVD extras (the actual photos).

So I made a cover in Photoshop and need only go through the xmas wrapping trauma.

[AntnyMD]

You get all the points for endurance. I would have given up long ago and made an old-school photo album.