Nero Vision 4 widescreen burn issue

[guymaness2]

I am somewhat new to Nero Vision. I have some home videos I have recorded in widescreen fromat. When I set up my project, I have a regular JPEG setup as the back ground, then my differnt videos are buttons, along with a slideshow. It all looks great in the Nero Previewer, however when I burn the DVD and actually watch it on a standard player, the videos are "squished". It looks like they may be crammed into 4:3. I thought the setting might have been the problem, so I set the video configuration to 16:9, and still got the same problem. If I watch the DVD on a full widescreen TV the videos seem to be the right size, but then the menu background image gets stretched.
I would like this DVD to be able to be watched on 4:3 screens. I would have expected it to "shrink" the videos to fit like regular 16:9 DVDs, not "stretch" the aspect ratio of the video itself.

Anyone got any tips on how I can create a DVD with a standard JPEG picture, and 16:9 videos all to show up in their proper aspect ratios when viewed on a 4:3 screen?

[tinker]

I do not use Nero Vision, but check if there is a possibility to set is as a "Letter Box" not "Pan and Scan".

[guymaness2]

The only think I can find to set is the aspect ratio in the "video options" section. The only selctions are 4:3, 16:9 and automatic.

[tinker]

Try automatic, it may process it as it should be. If that does not work try to crop your pictures to 16:9 ratio.
Other think, when you play DVD on your 4:3 TV, set DVD player output to Letter Box it should fix squishing.

[guymaness2]

Thanks for the help. I reburned it in th 4:3 aspect ratio and it fixed it. Now everything shows as it should in 4:3 equipment. I guess my logic was backwards. Automatic set it to 16:9 and gave the wrong ratio again.
One thing that does bother me though is that I can't get the video to burn in the same quality as the video file. When there is a decent amount of motion in the video, there is a little bit of digital "Blurring" around the edges. The get just sketchy enough to be noticable. I am burning it in high quality with smart encoding enabled. I don't know what is better between Progressive, interlaced (top first) and interlaced (bottom first).

If anyone has any input, I would greatly appreciate it 8)

[guns1inger]

Nero is a heap of steaming crap as an encoder and authoring tool. It is OK for burning data, but that is about it.

[guymaness2]

What freeware or OEM software do you recommend?

[MysticE]

What freeware or OEM software do you recommend?

Well you could try this free app to convert your source to .VOB and then pop the resultant files into NeroVison. Smart Encoding means it won't re-encode DVD compliant files. There are 2 encoders to choose from, try both.

http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html

If nothing else it will help you gain a little insight into conversions.

Note this app gets about the same respect here as Nero does.

[guns1inger]

NeroVision's so-called 'Smart Encoding' is about as reliable as the rest of NeroVision. 9 times out of 10 it will re-encode compliant material. Even worse, it usually encodes at a lower quality and larger file size, and then complain that it can't fit everything on the disc.

You can use SUPER to encode to mpeg-2, although HCEnc is a much higher quality option for free. It just takes a little more time to get used to.

GUIforDVDAuthor will do pretty much any authoring you need, also for free.

Imgburn will then burn your DVD for you, again for free.

So far there is not reason to even install Nero on your PC.

[MysticE]

Ah come on. 9 times out of 10? That's just not true. I've been using NVE3 for years and find it's Smart Encoding to be very reliable. Using files converted with both Mainconcept and ffmpeg (with Super) NVE has rarely ever re-encoded.