Solution for Multiple TV's (16:9 and 4:3)

[ABEG]

I currently only have a normal 4:3 set, but plan on purchasing a 16:9 unit sometime in the next few months. What is the best way to author/burn the a movie onto DVD-R if you want to view the movie on multiple televisions, i.e. a normal 4:3 set and a widescreen 16:9 set? How do studios do it with anamorphic widescreen discs? I would hate to have a disc that plays perfectly on one kind of television, but looks incorrect on another.

[asifanwar]

When you encode it, dont do any resizing from the original VOB. It will look all vertically stretched but thats OK cos thats how you make an anamorphic - by using all the vertical resolution for the movie. It is also good cos yout encode time is MUCH faster just re-encoding without resizing or anything. I get 2xrealtime in CCE!

Author it that way as usual (dont worry how funny it looks!). Now use IFOedit on our IFO file for that title and open up your IFO file.

Choose the VTSI_MAT section in the top portion of the window. A whole bunch of info appears in the bottom portion, and somewhere in THERE is a flag that tells your DVD player to automatically letterbox the movie if you have a 4:3 and dont if you have a widescreen! Woo hoo!

In the bottom portion, look down to Address '00000200'.
It will say something like "Video attributes of VTSTT_VOBS" or something silly. Double click that line and a dialog box will open up.
Make sure that 16:9 is set in the Aspect Ratio bit, and Automatic Letterboxing it turned ON.

Now SAVE your IFO file back over itself (button at the bottom of IFOedit's window).

You are all done! If you try playing your DVD files from your hard disk using PowerDVD, you will see your window will suddenly resize and look all widescreenish, just like the real discs do!

I hope this makes sense. I dont know how comfortable you are with IFOedit, so please dont take offence if this was too basic.
IFOedit gave me the biggest possible quantum leap that I had with my DVD-R drive, and I am still learning it!

Feel free to message me if I can help more!

BTW, it is far easier to re-encode, and use the original menus and IFOs to do all the magic for you! Looks identical to the original!

[MoovyGuy]

Hi asifanwar

So in this case, I assume that I'm authoring to a Video_TS structure, modifying the IFO file and then burn using what ??

Can Nero take this disk structure and burn it properly to a DVD -/+ R/RW ?

I ask, 'cause I use Ulead DVD Workshop & I don't know if once I get it to a disk structure if I can then get it to take the structure & turn it into the burnable ISO ....

Thanks

[asifanwar]

Yes, once you have a properly authored VIDEO_TS folder (by whatever means), and you have fiddled around with the IFO files (or used the original menus/IFO files and merged things together as in the Guides), then you can burn with any DVD burning program.

I personally use Nero 5.5.9.0 and have had perfect results every time. I make up an empty AUDIO_TS folder just in case, and I also make a folder called FILES. Inside this I put a nice high quality scan of the original DVD disc itself, as well as a nicely made up jewel case in Pagemaker format. This way, if I ever need to make a copy of my copy, I have all the various files right there on the disc! I use my Neato to print out the DVD graphic onto a round label and stick it onto my DVD-R. The final result blows you away (especially if you have managed to use the original menus!)

Hope this helps.

PS dont worry about having a FILES folder in the root - a set top player will just ignore it just as it does with a DVD-ROM/movie hybrid disc.

[MoovyGuy]

Hi asifanwar,

Well, I went into the IFO and saw that it was already set to 16:9 and automatic letterboxing, but that the DVD resolution was 720x480 when the encoded files were really at 352x480.

Since I knew that it did not work for me as is, I changed the Source Resolution to 352x480.

When I played the Disk structure directly it played perfectly with powerdvd. When I burned to an RW, it even played in WinDVD as well as PwerDVD properly. Normally WinDVD dosen't letterbox these properly.

So I bring it to my Pioneer DV-343 consumer player which normally plays everything I throw at it.

This time, It plays it wrong. It played it full screen . Even stranger than this is that when fast forwarding through the video it olnly plays on the left half of the screen, resizing to full when I return to normal play.

Also the bit rate in the IFO was set to CBR when the mpegs were of course VBR, should I change this to VBR ?

Now I'm stumped

[asifanwar]

Hmm... this complicates things a wee bit.

I have never dealt with anything other than true 720x480. Sometimes I (ahem) 'acquire' video clips that are of different resolutions but I always end up re-encoding them to be 720x480.

I dont think you can 'fool' the IFO file that way. I do know that you cant really use the software players to test something as weird as that, cos they are far more forgiving than set-tops. You do need to use a DVD-RW and play it on a real machine.

I would really advise resizing the source to 720x480 so you have good control over it. BTW, I would ignore what the IFO thinks of the VBR/CBR. I wont change the playback, AFAIK.

[ABEG]

So, lets say you are trying to convert an SVCD movie to DVD format and want it to play in full widescreen on a 16:9 tv and letterboxed on a 4:3 set. How would that be accomplished?

[MoovyGuy]

Hmm... this complicates things a wee bit.

I dont think you can 'fool' the IFO file that way. I do know that you cant really use the software players to test something as weird as that, cos they are far more forgiving than set-tops. You do need to use a DVD-RW and play it on a real machine.

Yeah, I tried useing true 720x480 sources and I have no problem with aspect, everything works fine.

And your right, the software DVD players are much more forgiving as they took the changes thaty I made to the IFO mut not the HW ones ....

Oh well. So basically I have come to this conclusion. If your media is encoded at 720x480 then by all means adjust IFO's so that they display proper 16x9 as the DVD player will letterbox where needed.

If your source is 352x480 (And this would be the best resolution to transcode an SVCD to) make sure that your aspect ratio is set to 4x3 and count on having to have your widescreen TV crop the bars off your letterbox image.