4x3

[blahblahblahblah]

I've exported footage from after effects brought that into encore. Now the footage is 720x576 (4x3). It's encoded correctly (4x3) and the final DVD plays fine on PC's/Laptops. But when put into a DVD player and displayed on TV the footage is stretched.

Now is there anyway to automatically get the TV display to display the correct 4x3 image without having to change the aspect ratio on the TV via the remote control.

Thanks for any replies

[Richard_G]

Change the settings on your DVD player. The default on my Philips player was set to 4:3 Pan and Scan, changed it to 16:9 and it now displays 4:3 DVDs in the correct aspect ratio with bars at each side.

[blahblahblahblah]

Thanks for the reply but I changed the set-up on the DVD player and still doesn't play the DVD as a 4:3 with black bars on the side. The image is still stretched.

I've opened premiere cs3 and created a 16x9 composition, brought in the exported 4:3 files and am now exporting that. It hasn't stretched the image which has the bars on the side now.

Then I'm going to bring that into encore and burn that onto DVD.... I'm hoping that, that will then play on TV's and Laptops just fine without the user having to change anything around. I guess I'll see what happens with that. Don't know if all will go to plan but I'll see.

[manono]

Some DVD players stretch all 4:3 DVDs to fill the entire screen of a widescreen TV set. You might test by trying a different player or taking it to a friend's house for testing. If it plays fine on a laptop and computer monitor, and if you're sure you have the player set up to output to a 16:9 TV set, then it's supposed to play OK.

Do you have other 4:3 DVDs with the same problem? It shouldn't be necessary to convert it to 16:9 by adding black bars on the sides. You lose resolution by doing that way. It's not a good solution.

Now the footage is 720x576 (4x3).

Just for your information, 720x576 is the resolution for both 4:3 and 16:9 PAL DVDs. 720x576 is really 5:4 or 1.25:1

[blahblahblahblah]

Some DVD players stretch all 4:3 DVDs to fill the entire screen of a widescreen TV set.
You might test by trying a different player or taking it to a friend's house for testing.

I've tried it on 2 DVD players and TV's

Do you have other 4:3 DVDs with the same problem?

The only other 4x3 DVD I played on the system was a Tarkovsky film which played fine and wasn't stretched. So I'm thinking that maybe there's something I can do in Encore to tell the TV or DVD player to change from the "Widescreen (Default)" aspect ratio to 4x3 when it detects the DVD

[Dimmer]

So I'm thinking that maybe there's something I can do in Encore to tell the TV or DVD player to change from the "Widescreen (Default)" aspect ratio to 4x3 when it detects the DVD

This is purely TV and/or DVD player issue. Some players have an ability to add black bars to the sides of 4:3 footage on widescreen TV (especially when connected through HDMI) but there is no standard that would allow you to control this reliably during DVD authoring.

There is a workaround though video with quality loss. Resize your video to 540x576 and add 90 pixel wide black columns on each side to make it again 720 pixels wide. You can do this in AfterEffects. Then encode the video as 16:9 Pan&Scan. As a result, on a widescreen TV stretched video will look as 4:3 with black columns. Standard 4:3 TV will cut off the black bars of Pan&Scan video, and it will look like a regular full screen movie.