NTSC Aspect Ratio Problem

[Seagrass]

I have a 23.976fps 608x366 xvid avi that Im trying to convert to a DVD-5
I have tried avi2dvd and divxtodvd and both conversions seem cut off at the sides (horizontal) and take up to much screen vertically. I doesent look like the usual 16x9 widescreen!

When I play the avi in BS PLayer or wmp it displays fine on my monitor and TV (TV out) its only after converting to DVD that I get this problem.

I have tried both automatic and 16x9 NTSC settings in both programs and it always comes out the same.

[guns1inger]

608 x 366 isn't exactly widescreen. It's a 1.66 aspect ratio, which means it will pillarbox if encoded as 16:9 (pillarbox - black bars left and right, letterbox - black bars top and bottom). I would suggest both programs are in fact working correctly.

If you encode it 4:3 you will get some very slight letterboxing instead.

[Seagrass]

i have a 4x3 television and its seems as if its cut off at the sides, like some subs you cant see the first and last couple of words!

Will it only pillarbox on 16x9 tv's?

[guns1inger]

No, it will pillarbox when played back as 16:9 if encoded that way. In fact the end bars would be very pronounced on a 16:9 encode.

Pillarboxing won't cut anything off. What you are describing sounds more like overscan. Basically, tube type TVs (CRTs) have a plastic cowling around them - usually the case of the TV itself - which covers the edges of the screen. This is to hold the screen in place, and to hide the inevitable distortions from the curves of the tube. The ersult of this is that anything on the extreme edges of the frame (top, bottom or side) may be hidden. The only way to address this is to shrink your image slightly, and add a blck border around it to fill it out to the proper resolution. The catch - overscan is not a constant. Some TVs have a very large overscan, some have very small overscan. LCDs have almost no overscan, the same with PCs. So no matter what you do you will either cut off too much, or not enough.