16:9 Ratio Menus

Hmmm.... I have a 16:9 ratio movie I'm cutting in FCE-HD. I'm assuming it will playback as it should on a regular 4:3 set -- with black bands at top and bottom, and on the new wide TVs, simply as "normal" filling the screen as produced.
Now, my question is: How do you get a 16:9 ratio "menu" in iDVD? Can it be done, or is that only something you can do in DVD Studio? In any case, I don't have a new 16:9 set so I can't see how they look anyway. Seems like you'd need two separate backgrounds for the same menu....?
Thanks!

Do these help at all?
iDVD: Creating widescreen DVDs for standard size televisions
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303030
Preparing images for menu backgrounds and buttons
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iDVD/6.0/en/23.html
Sue

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Eos 760D, aspect ratio do not exist in the menus

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Letterboxing and Aspect Ratio problem

I'm authoring a feature film DVD. All menus and movies are 16:9
When I play the Simulator in "16:9" everything is fine.
When I play the Simulator in "4:3 Letterbox" my menus are letterboxed as desired, however every movie is for some reason squished into 4:3.
Any ideas?
The Video Asset box in the Inspector tells me all my movies are 720x480 16:9.
All tracks show in the Track Inspector as display mode 16:9 Letterbox.
All Menus show in the Menu Inspector as Aspect Ratio 16:9
Also of note, one of my tracks is used both as a movie and as a motion menu. Although it's the same track, with the simulator in 4:3 it's correctly letterboxed as a menu, yet squished as a movie!
I exported from a 16:9 Anamorphic project in FCP (as a QTmovie set to Anamorphic NTSC DV) and imported straight into DVD Studio Pro. (I've noticed on these forums most people go through Compressor. I didn't. Would that be the cause of my headache?)
The movies display in my QuickTime Player as 16:9 clips with a size of 853x480

The Simulator is very far from accurate. Burn a disc, then pop it into a DVD player.

Aspect Ratio Scripting

I am trying to author a dvd with 16:9 and 4:3 letterbox video & menus. I want the DVD to check the player to see whether the aspect ratio is set to 4:3 or 16:9.
This works in all of the set top DVD players I have tried it in(presuming the player and monitor are set up correctly.)
I have a prescript on my first play(the 16:9 menu)which contains these three lines.
mov Aspect check, SPRM 14
div Aspect check, 1024
Jump 4:3 Main Menu if (Aspect check <3)
The issues start when I put the DVD in a computer.
In Mac DVD player the 16:9 menu is always played.
In a PC(3 different softwares) the 4:3 menu is always played. I have tried 16:9 studio releases and they display correctly in the same machines.
Does anyone know if software players have SPRMs like a set top unit to check?
I am currently only using the Aspect ratio portion SPRM 14(bits 10-13)to check what the player is set to. I know that SPRM 14 bits 8&9 show display mode but shouldn't the Aspect ratio check be enough?
grateful for any suggestions,
Brad
<br>
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I am trying to author a dvd with 16:9 and 4:3 letterbox video & menus. I want the DVD to check the player to see whether the aspect ratio is set to 4:3 or 16:9.
This works in all of the set top DVD players I have tried it in(presuming the player and monitor are set up correctly.)
I have a prescript on my first play(the 16:9 menu)which contains these three lines.
mov Aspect check, SPRM 14
div Aspect check, 1024
Jump 4:3 Main Menu if (Aspect check <3)
The issues start when I put the DVD in a computer.
In Mac DVD player the 16:9 menu is always played.
In a PC(3 different softwares) the 4:3 menu is always played. I have tried 16:9 studio releases and they display correctly in the same machines.
Does anyone know if software players have SPRMs like a set top unit to check?
I am currently only using the Aspect ratio portion SPRM 14(bits 10-13)to check what the player is set to. I know that SPRM 14 bits 8&9 show display mode but shouldn't the Aspect ratio check be enough?
grateful for any suggestions,
Brad
<br>
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Aspect ratio problems

I've built a DVD with 16:9 DV movies and menus made in Photoshop using first of all the PAL DV 16:9 preset and latterly a custom size in the ratio of 16:9.
My problem is that when I check the DVD using the simulator the menus fill the screen OK but the 16:9 DV media looks more lke 4:3. I noticed that while making menus in Photoshop using the DV16:9 preset that 'pixel aspect ratio correction' switched itself on and wonder if this is part of the problem. I've tried re-saving my menu pages with the correction unchecked but still have a problem. Is pixel aspect ratio correction just for display or does it affect what's saved. I won't get the chance to check a burned DVD until very close to my deadline so I don't know whether I have a real problem or not.
I suppose what I'm asking is what settings do I use in Photoshop to produce menus for a 16:9 project.
Help! Thanks!
Message was edited by: bladerunner1712

Thanks for your input, that clarifies things although I'm not sure I described the problem properly. I think that my Photoshop menus ARE being displayed properly and the problem is actually with my 16:9 DV movies or DVD SP itself. Here's what's happening ...
A 16:9 DV movie set as a menu background looks more like 4:3. The same 16:9 asset used as a button on that menu appears 16:9 (hurrah) but the same 16:9 asset used as the target of the button show up in the simulator as more or less 4:3!
I should have mentioned before that the problem only appears in the simulator and using the (sofware) DVD Player. Movies and menus all look 16:9 played on hardwrae players. What's going on.

Incorrect aspect ratio of display to monitor ?

I was wondering if this has happened to anyone else; I completed a website
and the client said that she had heard from a friend that her site looked distorted and no others did. She will not give any information as to the person, the machine, browser - anything. I tested the site on IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. I tested it on a variety of resolutions, on PCs and Macs. I went to Best Buy and proceeded to test the site on 20 different computers. The only way I could get a distorted view was changing the resoluton to an aspect ratio that was out of line with the monitors aspect ratio. ALL websites looked distorted then, but I am being told that this person reports that only mine is. As there is no way I can verify this finding, I am wondering if this has happened to anyone else. The client won't pay until this is resolved.
The site in question is www.alexandraduran.com. It is pretty straight forward although it has some quirks due to client request (against advice).
Thanks for any answers, guesses or suppositions.

Thanks for both your comments. I agree on the height - particularly
in the menus - it causes it not to work at all on an iphone for example. P
art of the problem on this site were some restrictions becuase the client wanted to maintain the site herself and a good
bit of the design editing lent itself to code "I hae me doots" about. The menu fix is a quick one on the style sheet but I am concerned that both of you found errors. The code validated in Dreamweaver CS4,the platform I wrote it in. So ... I couldn't find the errors. I also didn't see any "errors on page" messages while running it live. Where should I be looking ?
Thanks for your efforts.
Regards,
Kurt

Aspect ratio not working properly, and also, my final dvd has wierd ghosting

Hi,
I just can't seem to make a project work with encore. It's very touchy it seems. I have several videos that I tried to put together in a dvd, but I was having problems with the aspect ratio. Even when I used "Interpret Footage", the videos would incorrectly scale, most of the time to 4:3. At first they would look fine, but after transcoding, they would distort and sometimes be cropped on the 16:9 timeline I was using, or sometimes they would pop to 4:3 with black bars on the side.
It seems Encore NEVER gets what kind of video I'm using, even when I manually set the PAR in the Interpret Footage dialog.
So my solution was to bring everything into After Effects, render it back out as uncompressed AVI and use encore to make a dvd image which I then burned. My settings for this movie were 720x480 with a 1.2 PAR. The wierd thing is, I rendered two movies out in this way, Encore understood that one of them should be widescreen, but not the other. What gives?
I still had to do some tricks in Encore to get it to understand that these should be widescreen movies, and when I finally got them transcoded and looking right in my 16:9 timeline, I made an image. Then I burned it. Then I looked at it on a tv and I swear, every piece of text and or image had haloing on it.
Can someone tell me if this is a problem in my workflow? Encore is so confusing, I just want to know what the best method to making a simple dvd is. I don't want menus or any of that, just a dvd that loops. I can make one, but the quailty sucks. can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?
Thanks in advance,
Stan

I think I'm onto something. I exported form After Effects as an Mpeg2-DVD so I end up with
*.m2v files.
I had set those in AE to be 16:9 aspect and when I imported them into Encore they popped right into my 16:9 timeline with no problems. and the final build went way easier too, way faster.
Then I looked at my dvd on the tv and it still didn't look so great. But when I compared it with similar dvds that others had done, theirs had jagged edges on text as well and I thought, is this because I'm using Standard Definition?
I'm very new to this, so maybe I'm expecting too much. My images on the dvd play back fine on the TV, but the text doesn't look great.
Also, maybe I'm not sure how best to set up my video. When I play my movie back on the TV (A Samsung) and I select the pictures size of 4:3, my video is centered with black all around, but it's 16:9. I have to hit P Size two more times taking the TV first to 'widescreen' (which makes my image look stretched), then to zoom which makes my image fill the TV screen. I think some of my quality issues have to do with this scaling. Is there a way to make my dvd fit the full screen on 4:3 aspect on the TV?

Horizontal bands and aspect ratio problems

Sorry to ask yet another question, but I'm stuck again....
Two major problems here:
1. Thick horizontal bands of distortion across the video when burned on a DVD and played back on both the computer and TV. It's like the video is chopped up into strips and each is offset a bit from the next. This is most noticeable when there's movement, especially when the camera is panning.
I've found a few posts on this around the board, but all of them were solved by exporting to quicktime instead of quicktime conversion, which I already did...any more ideas?? It plays fine in Quicktime by the way.
2. Aspect ratio issues. The video is 16:9 (it exported from FCE squished, which I solved following these instructions: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1431891&tstart=150 (using the dimensions specified by the second poster)), but it plays on both the apple cinema display and the widescreen TV with letterboxing. On the computer monitor it looks right, but there are thin black bands at the top and bottom (thinner than normal letterboxing), but on the TV it looks squished horizontally, with full letterbox bands. Any idea what's going on??
I'm using FCE HD (version 3.5.1) on a Mac Pro running OS 10.4.11. Any advice would be HUGELY appreciated!!!
Thanks in advance,
Claire

1. Regular standard-def video, shot on miniDV tapes in two different cameras and imported through capture in FCE. One camera shot in 4:3 and I zoomed in to make it 16:9 in FCE, but the problems are identical in the footage from both cameras so I don't think that's a factor. The file is now an .mov file exported to quicktime from FCE. DVD was burned in iDVD (version 6.0.4) using one of the widescreen menus, with the video added by drag and drop.
2. Same video as above, same DVD, played through a DVD player connected to the TV.
Thanks!
Claire

Emergency Question Re: Aspect Ratio

I'm shooting for the first time today with an HD Camera. I'm going to shoot in SD, but which aspect ratio? 16:9 or 4:3? I don't know what type of TV the video will ultimately be viewed on, but I'd like the flexibility for it to look great on both widescreen and standard TVs (letterboxed).
Thanks.

I'd like the flexibility for it to look great on both widescreen and standard TVs (letterboxed).
Agreed. It's a subjective thing, but widescreens conforms more closely to the area of vision of the human eye. Here is how I achieve that. (see the punch line at the end):
HOW TO MAINTAIN 16:9 ASPECT FROM IMPORT TO BURN
This is the way I do it. There is no compulsion on you to do it my way, but this works (for me). I started this method before iMovie and iDVD were upgraded to 6.0.3, and because not all elements of the various iDVD themes (particularly the pre-iDVD 6 ones) are consistent in keeping to 16:9 throughout the process.
The widescreen preview works just fine when you check your finished project within iDVD. The problem only happens when you either burn a project or save it to an image.
The reason this bug is present is because iDVD incorrectly sets a single binary value to 1 instead of 0 in the .IFO and .BUP files that correspond to widescreen .VOB titles. If this value is set to 1, it instructs a DVD player to prohibit shifting to widescreen mode, even though another binary value that specifies the 16:9 format instead of 4:3 is properly set.
The simple translation of how to fix it is to open the .IFO and .BUP files, change the value (you do it in hexadecimal, which means it changes from 4F to 4E), save, then burn to DVD.
The reality is, it’s a bit trickier because you have to first copy iDVD’s disk image to your hard drive, change the read-only permissions on both the files and the VIDEO_TS folder to permit writing, save the changes, then run the whole folder through DVD Imager which saves a new disk image to burn that will be recognizable by DVD players.
That was one way to do it (and applies particularly to iDVD 5) but if, like me, you don’t fancy mucking about with hexadecimal, then here is an alternative.
A bug in iDVD 6, particularly when working with PAL, and which has been reported to Apple, is that the sub-menus in many of the themes (the chapter settings) default to 4:3 aspect, NTSC and mpeg 1, instead of the desired 16:9 in mpeg 2 in PAL. This may be partly a leftover from iDVD 5 or even a newer ‘feature’ of iDVD 6. Either way, it is annoying when it happens, and we must hope Apple cure it in iDVD 7. In the meantime here is my failsafe workaround, which sounds a lot more complicated when reading about it, that it is in practise.
Living in the UK, I use PAL (25 fps). Wherever you see a reference to PAL (25 fps) in the following you may substitute NTSC (30 fps) in the various settings mentioned (if you don’t live in Europe), the basic idea is the same. I still use this method, and take these steps, regardless of whether it is always necessary. Worst case scenario: it would have worked anyway. Best case scenario: it works perfectly where it otherwise wouldn’t!
The object of the exercise is therefore to ‘fix’ all constituent parts of the project (video, titles, theme, effects, even audio!) in the desired 16:9 aspect to avoid producing a DVD where the movie is in 16:9 and the menu is in 4:3 or where other irritating surprises lurk in your project, which you only discover after burning a coaster!
First go to http://www.mydvdedit.com/index.php?lang=english and download myDVDedit. This is shareware although the download is free. Send the guy a few dollars/euros, he deserves it. While you are there, read all about it. Now install it in your Applications Folder. You will need it later.
You have finished your iMovie project with music, transitions and so on, and saved it to you Movies Folder. Before you started the project you naturally set it to DV Widescreen.
Open iDVD. Give the project a name, and save it as Widescreen if it didn’t default to the same aspect as your iMovie project. Now import the iMovie project into iDVD, choose a theme (any theme you like, even if it prefers to stay at 4:3) and save the project. Do what you would normally do to the theme and its drop zones. Save the project.
Now save as Disk Image on your desktop. Leave it there for the moment when it has finished/appeared.
Open your Movies Folder. Create a new folder. Name it PROJECTNAME – TS FILES (where ‘projectname’ is the name of your project!). Close the folder. You can of course call it anything you like, but this aids identification.
Now double-click the disk image on your desktop. It contains two folders: AUDIO_TS (which is empty, but please pretend that it isn’t) and VIDEO_TS. Drag and drop these to the folder you created in your Movies Folder. (This takes a moment).
Click on the AUDIO_TS folder and go to Get Info in the file menu. Right down the bottom is where you have to change the permissions. Under ‘Ownership & Permissions’ change this from Read Only to Read & Write. Click the small triangle next to Details, scroll down and click on ‘Apply to enclosed items’. You will be asked for your root password. Close the get info window, and now click on the VIDEO_TS folder and do the same. Close the Projectname-TS Files folder. You have now allowed yourself to change the properties of the contents of those folders, which leads us to the next all-important step.
Open myDVDedit. Go to File and open the projectname TS Files folder. By all means stare at it shock and awe, but don’t bother finding out what it can do, except for the following:
Top left you fill see a list of files. Lower centre you have a large window. On the vertical menu to the left of that, click IFO.
In the window at the top left, ignore ‘First Play’ (if there was anything to correct in that, myDVDedit will have done so and told you).
Click on VMG Menu en (English). Now the whole thing springs to life.
Set Coding Mode to MPEG-2 (if it isn’t already)
Set Standard to PAL (or NTSC if that is what you want)
Set Aspect to 16:9 (not any of the other options)
Now save the file.
Click on VTS Menu 1 en (English) and repeat as above.
Click on VTS Menu 2 and repeat as above.
You have now permanently ‘fixed’ the entire contents of the TS folder (the disk image) in 16:9 aspect. Close myDVDedit – you won’t need it again until the next project!
If you have Toast 7 Titanium, open it. ‘Select DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS’. Choose Select from the main Toast window and select your projectname-TS Files folder. You are now ready to burn! You can set the burn speed (2x recommended) before the burn commences. Allow Toast to verify the burn before you eject the DVD-R disk.
If you don’t have Toast 7, then I assume you can burn the projectname-TS Files folder (disk image) via Disk Utility. I say ‘assume’ only because I have never tried it that way.
Either way, you now have a DVD which will play as 16:9 widescreen on any TV set, even the old ones where you can’t ask it to letter-box.

Menu aspect ratio considerations for widescreen DVD

Hello all:
I'm building a DVD with widescreen content. My intent was to build widescreen menus as well, as this would ease the use of my widescreen video for menu backgrounds (no need for panning) however I've noticed that when I create widescreen menus in Encore, they show up letterboxed on a 4:3 TV when my DVD player is set to letterbox widescreen content. At first, this seemed to make sense, however I've since observed that none of my commercial widescreen movies behave this way. Rather, they fill the screen entirely on both my 4:3 TV and my 16:9 TV, regardless of how the DVD player is set to deal with widescreen content. It's almost as if the disc provides different sets of menus for both cases, or that the menu contains directives to force the DVD player to do pan-and-scan in the 4:3 scenario even if the default behavior of the player is to letterbox.
Am I making any sense?
Basically: Is there any way to create widescreen menus and guarantee pan-and-scan on a 4:3 display, or else provide both 4:3 and 16:9 menus and have the player decide which to use? It seems the commercial DVDs must be doing one of these things...
EDIT: Incidentally, one of the popular DVDs I tried was The Matrix: Reloaded.
Cheers,
Aaron

>Basically: Is there any way to create widescreen menus and guarantee pan-and-scan on a 4:3 display...
Not using Encore, no. Encore 16:9 menus will be displayed letterboxed on a 4:3 monitor.
It may be possible to hack it post-authoring, but I'm not sure. Take a look at the tools on videohelp.com. If it is possible, you'll have to design your menus so the buttons are within a 4:3 safe area, and also have to live with the difference in pixel aspect ratios.

Which aspect ratio

I would like to make a DVD documentary for general distribution.
What aspect ratio ought i use , 16.9 or 4.3 , as my camcorder handles both ?
If i made it for widescreen and a person had a standard TV, would the imagery be cropped ?
Is there any website where they show the difference between how a film looks in different ratios ?

Personally, I prefer to make movies in 16:9. They look so much more impressive on widescreen TVs. The trend is moving toward 16:9 screens, so I'd rather look forwards than backwards. How a widescreen video plays on a 4:3 TV is determined by the TV or DVD player. Usually a setting in the DVD player allows the viewer to letterbox a 16:9 video for viewing on a 4:3 TV. This works for me with my DVDs on my old TV.
One thing to be aware of is that 16:9 menu screens made in iDVD 6 will not letterbox when viewing the movie. (I don't know why that is, but on my DVD player that's what happens.) Consequently, you need to place your menu buttons and titles very carefully. While working in iDVD turn on the TV safe area, and keep in mind that the sides of the safe area will be lost on a 4:3 screen. In my experience the menus still function, and it's just an aesthetic problem. Once I make a selection, the video that plays is properly letterboxed.
Regards.

Anyone in PAL land create custom menus in CS2 FOR DVDSPro 4 for 16:9?

Anyone in PAL land create custom menus in DVDSPro 4 for 16:9?
I need help with Photoshop into DVDSpro4 concerning quality of logos and graphics and what presets to use in Photoshop CS2
Thanks!
Dual G5 2.5GHz & Dual G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Hi Allister,
Thats what you should be seeing. The pixel count for both 4:3 and 16:9 are the same. It's the pixel aspect ratio which change. Unfortunately Quicktime doesn't have an aspect ratio flag setting. Hence you get your stretched look.
With respect to the DVDSP settings. As far as I am aware Pan / Scan in DVDSP is still faulty. But it was DVDSP 3 when I last checked this. So, letterbox is the choice for you.
Good Luck

Best practices for sharp text in menus, can't get my W's clear!

I am making a widescreen movie and trying to get either sharp or non pixelated text in the menus using the latest DVDSP version, be it typed in, a graphic in Photoshop/Illustrator, 300 dpi, the font is always bad (particularly the W's).
I try Photoshop and the font is bad for a start using the Widescreen setting and anti-aliasing, I try 300 dpi then bringing it in to DVD Studio Pro, still bad.
I've looked at professional DVD's and they seem to use really clear fonts.
Does anyone have any good suggestion before I chuck my Apple out the window?!
Thanks!

I found the solution, make everything in Illustrator (well text anyway) at a big size then bring it ibto Photoshop in a dicument 1024 x 576 (so no widescreen pixel ratio) then when saving document bring size of Image to 720 x 576 then you get great anti aliased pictures.
Solved.

SIze of Menus for BluRay

I appologize for this newbie question but here goes.
I made a BluRay folder and burned to disc a project with two menus (all from the Encore library). The first has Play all and Scenes buttons with a background and the second is a Scenes Menu with video buttons both of which were labeled "wide" and apparently are 720x480 with a 1.2 aspect ratio.
When I burned the folder, the Play all menu (first play) fills the screen nicely, but the second "Scenes" menu only fills about half the screen ie the buttons are in the right place, but the background is just in the middle of the screen.
I thought that the encoding process would enlarge both backgrounds to fill the screen but repeatedly, it doesn't.
Is this the normal process for Encore. If so, do I have to make the menus 1920x1080 in Photoshop (footage is HDV from an HV20 camera) or use the "Library" menus labeled HD for both or just the menus beyond the first one.
Thanks in advance,
John Rich

>use the "Library" menus labeled HD
Purely a guess here, but that's probably a very workable solution. I do know that an online retailer of Encore menus does make both SD and HD versions, and you need to pick the right one.

Script for 4:3 & 16:9 Menus on same disc

Hello-
I'm currently authoring a DVD that plays 16:9 on a 16:9 monitor, and 16:9 Letterboxed on a 4:3 monitor.
How should I build the menu?
Can I build 2 menus- 1 at each spec, and write a scrpit that can choose the appropriate menu?
Thanks!
-eric

I think you could write a script that checks the DVD Player's aspect ratio setting and selects the menu accordingly. But if you've got more than one menu and multiple tracks that are returning to multiple places that could get painfully complicated.
-brian

16:9 Ratio Menus

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