Backing up home movies

[spcchap]

Hello everyone.

Everyone was so helpful the last time I posted, so I wanted to come to you with an additional problem I am having. I am in the process of backing up all of my family DVDs onto a hard drive (copying entire VIDEO_TS folder structure to the hard drive). This is for backup purposes. I won't be regularly watching videos from this hard drive.

I ran into a few DVDs that when VLC plays them, the video doesn't extend all the way from left to right. In other words, there is a lot of black space on the left and right of the video and the picture looks squeezed. When I play an individual .VOB, it looks fine. There are two tracks on this DVD (the first is 1 hour, 5 minutes; the other is 1 hour, 14 minutes).

The DVD plays fine on my television. Why does this happen? Should I be concerned?

Thanks in advance!!

[davexnet]

Is the content 4:3 aspect ratio? Perhaps VLC is is playing it in a wider frame and pillar boxes just to maintain the correct A/R.
Just a guess - perhaps you can post a screen shot or a short clip.