Canon widescreen plays 4:3 on computer

[yurkyurk]

I have a Canon MVX430. I film in widescreen mode. When I move these files to PC and then to DVD, they appear correctly as widescreen.

When I play the captured avi files in WMP, they show correctly as widescreen.

But when I play them in any other player (e.g. VLC, BS Player, KM Player, etc), it shows as distorted 4:3.

I have noticed that WMP reports the files as 720x576 4:3 actual, 16:9 displayed.

Can anyone explain what is going on?

[guns1inger]

Not all players and not all formats support the widescreen flag. All of those players can be told to display the footage correctly however.

DV AVI, and full-D1 mpeg-2 PAL footage is 720 x 576, whether it is 4:3 or 16:9. The pixels are not square, which is how the different displays can show them correctly.