4:3 to 16:9 format conversion in iDVD4

[Ti-maniac]

I would like to take 16x9 movies processed in iDVD4 and have them display properly on regular 4:3 TVs. What I mean by this is the result VIDEO_TS file should contain vobs that contain proper 16x9 mpeg2 files when viewed in quicktime for example. The display on a conventional TV would display black bars above and below the video.

The reason to use iDVD4 is the abundance of themes not available in DVDSP for example.

In iDVD3 you could trick it by reformating the mpeg within the resource file. However, iDVD4 does not allow you to do this.

So my question regards the possibility of working directly with the VIDEO_TS files, and modifying the MPEGs and IFO files within. Could anyone advise if they have any experience at resetting the proper flags in these files, and if so, how and where to do it.

Thanks,
Ti

[Baldrick]

16:9 should look okey on a 4:3 tv, if you author it as 16:9 anarmophic dvd then. black borders are added if you set the dvd player to output to a 4:3 tv.

[Ti-maniac]

The problem is that you cannot author it in 16x9 in with any combination of settings from iMovie4->iDVD4.

I found a solution though recently. I am using IFOedit to change the final video_ts file to 16x9 and it works fine.

[Falcon500]

The reason to use iDVD4 is the abundance of themes not available in DVDSP for example.

Can't you import the iDVD4 project into DVDSP3 and work on it there? I believe DVDSP imports the theme from iDVD4?

[Ti-maniac]

In theory this is true. However in practice it does not work well, and serious editing has been required at least with the work I have done. Using DVDSP, although powerful, is also more time consuming. Getting iDVD to do the job is very attractive, as it provides simple and quick integration to iMovie, although the compression time is absurd. Let the computer crunch overnight. There are pros and cons, I have used DVDSP extensively, and would love to have a natural way to just use iDVD to do most of my simple authoring. I am now very excited about the use of IFOedit to fix the problem, which has apparently plagued many for years on the Apple iDVD forum and elsewhere.

[Falcon500]

Problem with IFOedit is that it has to be run on a PC with windows... Not very Mac friendly. Perhaps when the new IFO program "myDVDEdit" gains editing features we will be able to set the 16:9 bit after we have authored our DVDs with iDVD.

http://www.macetvideo.com/mydvdedit/mydvdedit.html