How can I get Hi8 video captured in NTSC Standard, to display as 4:3 when DVD is played on TV?

Question

I have been capturing Hi8 tapes of our family, using a Sony analog-to-digital converter and Adobe Premier 10's NTSC Standard (4:3) preset. However, when I use Premiere Elements 10 to burn the digital files to DVDs and then play them on a Sony DVD player and Bravia flat-panel TV, the video is distorted in width automatically by the Wide Zoom mode. The TV cannot be configured to display the frames in the Normal Mode because the resolution is 720p, so the images cannot be viewed with the original 4:3 frame aspect ratio.
After much experimentation, I tried capturing a tape in the NTSC Wide (16:9) preset. When I started to burn the AVI file to a DVD, I got a warning that I was using the wrong format, and the choice to correct the format.  I chose NO, and then burned the DVD. To my surprise, it did display on the TV without horizontal stretch, and the images did not appear to have been noticeably degraded.
I would very much appreciate knowing if there is some way for me to go back now and have Premiere Elements 10 somehow reformat all of the Hi8 tapes I captured using the NTSC Standard preset, so that I don't have to recapture them, but can simply reformat them and burn them to DVD's that can be displayed on the TV without being distorted?

Answer 1

Thanks for replying Steve.  I've been using a Sony DVMC-DA2, an analog-to- digital media converter which I was advised is used by people converting media professionally. I've been using an S-Video cable to connect it to my Sony Hi8 video camera (Model CCD-TR101), which was considered to be a high-end camera, back in the day (1992). The converter is connected to my Windows 7 computer with an IEEE 1394, "FireWire" cable. I'm not sure how I would check the format into which the Hi8 video is being converted, but I've followed the Adobe Premiere 10 Video Tutorial and configured the capture preset to the NTSC Standard (4:3), which is the one recommended for DV cameras. I couldn't find any advice specifically explaining how to configure the preset when converting analog Hi8 to digital.
In the Premiere Elements 10 editing software itself, the video images burned on a DVD are not distorted, and the quality of the video images during editing looks to be every bit as good as the camera could record.
When I started showing the DVD's to my family, however, I was very disappointed to discover that everything looked stretched in the horizontal direction. I have since studied the configuring of frame aspect ratio modes (Normal, Zoom, Wide Zoom and Full) described in the Sony Bravia TV's instruction manual, in detail. And, I have tried every conceivable combination of the picture and frame settings to see if I could "unstretch' the video images. No, luck. It was then that I came across a footnote that indicated that the Normal mode was not available for video resolutions of 720p, 1080 and higher. Unfortunately, the NTSC Standard preset indicates that it does capture DV in images that have 720 horizontal pixels by 480 vertical pixels.
When I view the Hi8 burned to DVD's on other computers, using Windows Media Player and Video Lan, they are not distorted. In fact, they look so good that I'm just about ready to dedicate my laptop as the DVD player for my TV set!  It was while contemplating whether there might be a way to avoid doing this, that it occured to me to try capturing some Hi8 tape using the NTSC Wide Screen preset option. My half-formed idea was that, since the ratio of pixel width to pixel height in the Standard preset was smaller than with the Widescreen preset, using the latter to capture an analog video image might either (1) expand the width of the overall image much farther, and cause grotesque distortion, or (2) squash the width of the overall image, so that it looked normal. I can't pretend to have known what I was doing, since I don't understand video recording technology, but it also occured to me that the Widescreen preset might degrade the resolution, so that it was somehow no longer 720p, and thereby possibly circumvent the Sony lockout of the Normal Mode for these DVD's. Whatever it did, capturing Hi8 video with the NTSC Widescreen preset did, indeed, reduce the width of the frames appearing on the TV Screen, so that they apperared normal.
The question with which I'm now wrestling is whether to go back and re-capture all of the Hi8 tapes, with the NTSC Widescreen preset, that I had already captured with the NTSC Standard preset - a big job. The warning window that popped-up when I prepared to burn the test video captured with the Widescreen preset gave me the option of correcting my "mistaken" choice of capture preset. I declined, and was rewarded with an undistorted video image. Which raises the possibility that, somewhere in Premiere Elements 10, there may be the capability of invoking that same pop-up window and modifying what the software considers to be the "correct," Standard preset to the Widescreen preset,so that I can change the formatting for all of the HI8 tapes I've already captured, so that they can be burned to DVD's and viewed in their proper frame aspect ration.
This has been a long-winded follow-up to your initial answer to my question, but I would very much appreciate any further suggestions.
Many thanks.  Paul