Aspect ratio question - VOB/Mpeg2 files 16:9 to play on 4:3

[bahjan]

Hi,

I've been happily taping 4:3 TV format onto DVD recorder - but now I have a widescreen TV as well. As I sometimes tape from both TV's (4:3 and 16:9) I find that even though I set the DVD to record at 16:3 the picture when played back in 4:3 screen still looks distorted. What I basically want to do is know how to create a DVD from a 16:9 TV output which will play on a 4:3 format without attenuation of the figures. They are stretched at the moment when I play back on 4:3 format TV or my desktop PC (not a widescreen monitor)

I read the IfoEdit might work without having to rencode - but the process was not explained. I assume you select Video under description and change the video atrributes from 4:3 to 16:9? Do I have to change the resolution as well? (at the moment a file is showing 352x576 is selected for PAL Mpeg2). I have IfoEdit and PgcEdit and DVDShrink. Any advice or pointing me to the right thread would be great.

[Baldrick]

You can try ifoar2ws.

[bahjan]

Thanks for that Baldrick. I found this thread: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/239645-Converting-video-of-4-3-ratio-to-16-9-ratio John 'FulciLives' first suggestion might work: here it is again:
Assuming you have NTSC at 720x480 ... you cut 60 from the top and 60 from the bottom so you have 720x360 then you resize from 720x360 to 720x480 and it is now 16x9 WS NTSC format.

Assuming you have PAL at 720x576 ... you cut 72 from the top and 72 from the bottom so you have 720x432 then you resize from 720x432 to 720x576 and it is now 16x9 WS PAL format.

I assume that ifoar2ws will do this automatically? In which case great. However, I used IfoEdit to examine my dvd files and discovered something a bit odd (I think). My files are PAL but they are 352x576 :
Here's what IfoEdit shows:

Menu attributes M-Peg-1 (720x480) (NTSC) (NTSC 525/60) (4:3) (pan-scan & Letterboxed)

Title Set (Movie) Attributes
Video: Mpeg2 352x576 (PAL (PAL 625/50) (4:3) (not specified perm. display)

Audio ! Not Specified (Mpeg1) 2ch 48kps 16bps

All the cells are 25fps.

Does this look odd to anyone? I have to say I did hack the DVD Liteon LVW5005 DVD to get 3hr recording ability - wonder if the settings were changed. A setting on the Liteon DVD recorder called 'playback' has 3 modes '16:9 wide', '4:3 Pan', or '4:3 L.Box' - at present it's set at 16:9 wide.

I have to say that having tested a video to DVD taped from 4:3 format TV VHS the resulting DVD recording is fine (The DVD also displays of 16:9 okay) - I am still playing with getting a 16:9 format VHS recording to record without attenuation on 4:3 equipment. Setting DVD to playback in 16:9 but didn't seem to make a difference, which seems a bit strange to me. Only manually adjusting TV display to 16:9 does anything. It means watching with huge black bands top and bottom, I'm trying to figure out how to adjust the 16:9 DVD files so that it will display at on either 4:3 and 16:3 format TV, with none or the minimum of letterboxing. Seems the fix above may work but I don't know whether my MPEG2's being 352x576 is another problem....
I use Verbatim DVD-RW disks to create onto DVD-R. How to do I change 352x576 resolution to 720x480 is it a setting on my DVD player, desktop DVD writer or the software I use to create and burn DVD's DVDShrink, Imgburn? Would it be advisable anyway as I understand 352x576 is very compilant with many standalone and PC dvd players?

[manono]

Assuming you have PAL at 720x576 ... you cut 72 from the top and 72 from the bottom so you have 720x432 then you resize from 720x432 to 720x576 and it is now 16x9 WS PAL format.

I assume that ifoar2ws will do this automatically?

No, that requires reencoding. What you've quoted is for converting a true 4:3 file to 16:9. What you're asking (I think) is how to turn a file incorrectly labeled as 4:3 to 16:9. If that's right, I'd do it using PGCEdit. Open the DVD in PGCEdit. Right-click on the main video and hit 'Domain Streams Attributes'. In the new screen, if it says 4:3, change it to 16:9 and Automatic Letterbox'. Save and test before burning to disc. If I'm wrong about what you're asking, it's easy to undo what you did.

[r0lZ]

I don't understand well what is your input source. What are you recording? Analog or digital TV? And how do you record? On tape first, or on DVD?

Anyway, the format of the recording must match the format of the source video.

Analog TV is (almost always) 4:3. Digital TV is often 16:9, but not always. Note that the format of your TV is not relevant. It's the format of what you receive via the cable or antenna that matters.
Note that if the format is 4:3, the movies shot in 16:9 or Cinemascope have horizontal black borders. You cannot remove them (unless your recorder is sufficiently smart to detect and remove them to convert 4:3 to 16:9 on the fly). Similarly, old TV videos shot in 4:3 and later converted to 16:9 may have hardcoded vertical black borders.

The output (playback) format should match the format of your TV.

If the TV you use is a 16:9 TV, you should configure the DVD player for 16:9 ouptput. In that case, if the input (recorded) format is 16:9 too, you'll have a full screen image. But if the input is 4:3, the DVD player will add large vertical black borders, to show the recorded picture in 4:3. (That means that if the input has also already horizontal black borders, you'll end up with a small 16:9 image centered on the screen. Your TV has probably a zoom mode that you can set with the remote to display it full screen.)

If the TV you use for playback is a 4:3 TV, you should configure the DVD player for 4:3 output. The letterbox or pan&scan modes are a matter of taste. When the input format is 4:3, it will be displayed full screen anyway. But if the input format is 16:9, then the DVD player should either add horizontal borders to convert the 16:9 image to 4:3 (in letterbox mode), or crop the left and right parts of the image to display only the center of the image, without black borders (in pan&scan mode). IMO, the pan&scan mode is terrible, and should never be used, but it's up to you.

Anyway, the format that is recorded on your DVD must be correct, as otherwise the DVD player will send incorrect video to the TV, regardless of its output settings. So, it is important to select the right input format when recording. If it is wrongly configured, the recorder will record a bad information on the DVD. Luckily, you can fix it later with PgcEdit (but of course, you'll have to burn a new DVD). See manono's reply above.

If you have still some problems, please verify what format has been recorded on the DVD with PgcEdit, and use the PgcEdit preview to verify if the image is distorted. If it's the case, the input format is probably wrong.

[orsetto]

bahjan, the problem is most likely caused by your DVD recorder. Many of these units are poorly designed to burn discs that are not dual-format compatible with both types of TV. The issue you have with distorted playback of 16:9 recordings on older 4:3 televisions occurs when the recorder fails to include the standard "flag" signal in the DVD that instructs players to automatically letterbox 16:9 videos when connected to an older 4:3 television. Instead, the DVD is permanently encoded as 16:9 anamorphic squeezed into a 4:3 frame, optimized strictly for newer televisions that let you horizontally stretch the image to proper 16:9 using the picture size button on the TV remote. Such recordings will fill the screen of a 4:3 television but look distorted (elongated heads and thinner bodies of actors, etc). Since 4:3 televisions do not usually have picture size controls, they cannot correct the image.

The easiest way to fix this is by following the instructions in manono's post: rip the DVD to your PC hard drive, use the PGCedit software to add the missing letterbox feature, then burn a second DVD copy from the altered PC file. This copy will now correctly trigger letterbox presentation on older 4:3 televisions, while retaining full-quality 16:9 capability when played on a newer HDTV.

[bahjan]

Thanks for all your posts. Yes, it does seem to be a problem with the recorder not being dual format.

TV is 4:3 format - with picture set to 'automatic' which means that any movie transmitted in widescreen will appear with black bands top and bottom. It does. This is the TV attached to my DVD recorder.
DVD Recorder - playback output set to 4:3 letterbox as suggested.

ifoar2ws seems to have a bug: I complied a DVD with several clips from a vhs to test. Some were taped on 16:9 format TV others on 4:3 - I copied all files from my DVD-RW disk onto my Hardrive and used software suggested by Baldrick (ifoar2ws.). Although it said it had changed the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9, when I built/burned the files to another DVD-RW (with Imgburn) and played them on my DVD player, nothing seems to have changed; ie 4:3 format clips played okay in fullscreen but 16:9 were still stretched.
I checked my these ifoar2ws processed files with PcgEdit. When I clicked 'Domain Stream Attributes' PcgEdit threw up the following:
Warning: The display mode of the current titleset is 16:9. In 16:9 mode, Automatic Letterbox or Pan and Scan or both flags must be specified. However none were set. PgcEdit has forced automatic LB for you. Select OK.
Selected OK Domain Attributes were as follows:
VTST 16.9 Auto LB PAL 352x576 'Camera' is selected rather than 'Film'

Having done that, the dvd player displayed 16:9 files in letterbox format as expected, but I also found that all 4:3 format videos also displayed as LB format rather than full screen. I found that I only got full screen on files I knew to be originally 4:3 if I set the dvd recorder playback setting setting back to 16:9 (which results in fullscreen 4:3 but distorted 16:9 playback). I only have 3 options of the DVD playback settings: 16:9, 4:3 Letterbox of 4:3 Pan and scan. Must admit I haven't tried Pan and Scan setting....

I thought by using PcgEdit fix was I supposed to get fullscreen 4:3 and 16:9 in letterbox as detected, or am I mistaken? (I am a bit of a newbie re the powers of PcgEdit ) Have a missed something?

[r0lZ]

A 4:3 video must have the 4:3 flag set in the IFO, and a 16:9 video must have the 16:9 flag set (with either LB or P&S or both). Of course, that means also that you cannot put several videos with different aspect ratios in the same titleset (aka VTS), since all videos in the same VTS share the same properties. But you can have several VTSs with dirrerent aspect ratios on the same DVD. It seems that you need to manually fix the aspect ratio flags on each VTS of each DVD. Use PgcEdit, as it doesn't have that missing LB/P&S flag bug.

TV is 4:3 format - with picture set to 'automatic' which means that any movie transmitted in widescreen will appear with black bands top and bottom.

It's not the job of the TV to add the black borders. The DVD player must do it, if it is correctly configured for 4:3 output. The TV should display what it receives, and 4:3 TVs are supposed to display everything in 4:3. Dot. It should NOT have any permanent setting to change that behaviour, and I have never understood why some recent 4:3 TVs have added confusing settings to (badly) "control" the aspect ratio of the display. So, if you can configure it correctly, it will be much easier to understand what's happening.

[bahjan]

Thanks for the explanation 'r0lZ'. Of course, each separate format video file has to have it's own setting - I get it now. (me being dim...!) Cheers all!