Burning and keeping 16:9 ratio DVD

[mrbixby]

i'm kinda at a lost right now....i've read a few threads pertaining to what one should do when trying to keep the 16:9 ratio (the menus are not of any real signifigance for me). I tried burning the .AVI in Toast 7 but the video file was not even recognizable in my standalone DVD player. I've had nothing but success with iDVD, but does iDVD even support burning widescreen DVD? so pretty much here's the rundown of what i'm trying to do while maintaining the ratio:

1. create chapters using iMovie
2. export to iDVD
3. burn movie with ratio still in tact

the menu's ratio really doesn't matter to me, but if anyone could help with this, i would greatly appreciate. oh yeah, the programs that i currently have are that are relevant to this thread are iLife05, Toast 7, and ffmpegx. thanx for any suggestions.

MB

[willrob]

iDVD 6, part of the recently released iLife 06, can create widescreen DVDs (menus included). If you only want the movie to play widescreen on a widescreen TV you have to set a flag that tells the DVD player to fit to screen. The simplest method is one I explained in another thread.

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=286516

If you don't want to read all that stumbling in the dark, here's the jist: Download "Anamorphicizer", drop you film onto it (the flag will be set) and place the reference movie it will create into the iDVD project.

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

[Frobozz]

I'm curious about what trouble you had with Toast 7. Depending on the movie's length you might prefer Toast 7 to iDVD because you say menus don't matter. On longer movies Toast's support of AC-3 audio gives more space to higher bit rate video encoding than does iDVD.

After setting your chapter markers in iMovie, drag the iMovie Project file to Toast with DVD video selected in the Video window. Is this what you did and the DVD doesn't play?

iDVD is wonderful for many things and I'm eager for my local Mac dealer to get iLife 6. It's just that for what you described Toast 7 should have worked fine for you as well.

[mrbixby]

i don't have a widescreen TV, i just wanted the movie to adjust to the TV that I currently have (*smiling* struggling artist here). but if i use anamorphicizer, it will set the movie to play as widescreen and drop the reference movie to iDVD and it will play as widescreen (black bars on top/ bottom) of screen?? i'll give this a try and report back with the results. thanx for all the info guys.

MB

[mrbixby]

yeah, i went to put the DVDr in my standalone, and it said this "error occurred" blah blah blah, but i've had nothing but success with iDVD. Toast, in general, has been hit and miss for me. but i will definitely try that too......wouldn't hurt anything, right. thanx.

MB

[mrbixby]

hey frobozz, i tried it that way and it worked perfectly!! it keeped the proportions for widescreen and everything. i don't know what i did wrong the first time, but this time seemed to be the cure. and u were right about Toast encoding A LOT faster than iDVD. it took approx. 2 hours to encode and burn a 1.5 hour film. thanx for everything everyone. MB