Aspect Ratio with Maestro

[kothreat]

Hi all,

I have DVDMaestro ver 2.9. Here's my problem... Any help is appreciated!

I ripped a wide screen "High Crime" DVD with DVDDecryptor, then encoded with TMPG. In TMPG, the project is set to size 720x480, 4:3 display, 29.97fps.

After encoding, the .m2v file looks fine with the correct aspect ratio on my computer.

Now I went into DVDMaestro Ver2.9, imported the encoded video into my "Asset" window. When I bring up the "Asset Properties", it tells me "MPEG2 NTSC (720 x 480) 29.97 FPS". I compiled and burned the DVD. But resulting DVD looked streched, vertically, i.e. everyone looks taller than they should be!! (

Tutorials (and I've gone through a number of them) seemed to suggest that there is a "NTSC 16:9" setting in DVDMaestro... but I've looked and couldn't locate the option. I'm using Ver2.9. Is that my problem? What should I do now?

Any help is appreciated!!! Thanks!!!

Jimmy
kothreat@yahoo.com

[Digifreak]

You change the project aspect in Maestro at the bottom of the movie timeline window, it is at the bottom, 2nd box to the right. Right click it and set to 16:9 letterbox then process. The movie timeline window comes up when you double click the movie in the movie folder on the project tree to the left.

[BJ_M]

movie time line at bottom left next to frame rate ... to set movie aspect ratio



right click on project -> properties -> set menu aspect ratio here

[kothreat]

Hey Digifreak, BJ_M!!

Thanks for the quick reply. After a day and a half of ripping/re-encoding, DVDMaestro finally works for me!!!

Now I can cook my own 16:9 movies!

BTW, I use TMPG to compress my videos, using "Automatic VBR (CQ_VBR)" as my rate control mode. I'm using

Quality: 100 (highest)
Maximum bitrate: 5100
Minimun bitrate: 2000

And I've seen some level of quality lose. What software do you guys using to get high quality videos?

You guys are the best!!!!
Thx again!!!

kothreat@yahoo.com

[Digifreak]

CCE all the way! I think it gives far superior results and is 4 times faster for the same no. of passes. I use it at 3-4 pass VBR, flawless. Doom9 has some great tutorials.

[BJ_M]

@100 setting you are in fact in CBR mode ... more or less ..

use 2pass VBR with Tmpgenc .. if you want more passes - you will have to go with CCE , but CCE is a $2000 app .. and in fact i'm able to get just about the same quality out of Tmpgenc and in some material (source types) better than CCE ..