How to set 4:3 automatically?

[sneed]

My clients mostly have widescreen TV's at home. When they play store bought DVDs, their TV's automatically add black borders to the sides for 4:3 videos. But their TV's stetch out my 4:3 wedding videos. How and when do I add a setting so this won't happen? I curently use TMPGE author.

[Baldrick]

If your source mpgs are 4:3 should tmpgenc dvd author make a 4:3 dvd.

But you could check with pgcedit or ifoedit and see if it is 4:3 or 16:9.

[guns1inger]

There are also settings in the DVD player and the TV that will override any good work you do, and that you cannot alter with authoring. Most widescreen TVs can be set to stretch 4:3 material to fill the 16:9 frame (walk into any retail outlet and look at the way they have their TVs setup if you want to see it happen). There is nothing you can do to change this when you author as the TV will simply override it.

If they have their TV and DVD player correctly setup, you should have no issues. If they don't, there is nothing you can do about it anyway.

[sneed]

My client specified that all his rented 4:3 videos are NOT stretched, only my 4:3 video is stretched. His rented 4:3 videos are automatically shown with the side bars. I have it set at 4:3 in TMPGE, but I'm unfamiliar with widescreen TV's.

[Cornucopia]

Ignoring the client for a moment, take your authored disc into a store that has WS TVs and try them out.

Just a hunch, but I bet you did fine and the client hasn't actually set it up right--and doesn't really know the finer points in the different modes.

Scott

[garryheather]

There are also settings in the DVD player and the TV that will override any good work you do, and that you cannot alter with authoring.

I've got a DVD player that does that by default with no option to default it to off, and it's HATEFUL.

So word of advice, guys - if you're looking at the Samsung DVD players with EZ View be aware that the default, regardless of what the DVD authoring states, is widescreen if you have set the setup menu as being connected to a widescreen TV. I can't tell you how annoying this is. I'm a purist and will not watch 4:3 stretched out to 16:9. Every DVD I play (even down to titles) I have to press the bloody EZ View button on the remote several times to turn the damn thing off.

As much as I like my new player I wish Samsung would make the default so as it follows the disc. Bastards.

Sorry, rant over.

[SingSing]

Thank you for the rant. Now I know why I bought a JVC player instead of Samsung, since both of them have 1.5x zoom to play 16:9 DVD on 4:3 TV.

There are a lot of 4:3 material out there, especially children movies. Samsung is trying to shoot themselves in the foot ?