Best way to present 1.55:1 aspect ratio on DVD?

We have two French movies to release on DVD which have been supplied as 4:3 masters in 1.55:1 widescreen.
I've re-formatted them in Final Cut Pro to lose the black bars and have made them 1.55:1 on an anamorphic 16:9 timeline.
On a 16:9 TV they display as 'pillarboxed'; with black bars down the sides. Is this the best way to present this 'awkward' aspect ration on DVD?
Would love to have some feedback on this. Is there a way you could do a 14:9 DVD for example, as this would be a near perfect match for 1.55:1.
G5, dual 2.7 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I don't know why you're getting all this advice to release anything - that's not actually 4:3 or 1.37:1 (aka Academy Ratio) - without anamorphic enhancement in 2007. Maybe it's the lack of a real DVDSP update that's made us all lazy.
Personally, I would try not to scale your 4:3 master in an anamorphic timeline in FCP. Instead, make use of Compressor 2 (or later) and Frame Controls to do the upscaling whenever possible.
I had to do what you're asking once, but for a 1.66:1 project. Based on that, here's what I'd recommend:
Create a new 4:3 sequence
(Optional) Alter the background of your Canvas to either of the Checkboard patterns
On V1, drop in a Color Matte and adjust it's color to strongly contrast with your footage
On your Color Matter, drop in a Widescreen Matte and adjust it to 1.78:1
Place your 4:3 master on V2 and scale it down until it fits within the frame created by the Color Matte on V1. I'm guessing about 85% or so?
Disable V1
Instead of rendering and exporting a QT movie, to maintain the highest quality, I'd suggest marking off a key portion (perhaps no longer than 2 minutes), then File > Export > Using Compressor
In Compressor, adjust the settings how you like, but be sure to:
Alter the movie to 16:9 (duh!)
Turn Frame Control to Custom and set both Resize and Deinterlace to Better (not Best) and adjust the Anti-Alias and Details settings to, say, 3 and 9, respectively.
In the Geometry pane, adjust top and bottom crop values by 60. If your default is 2 and 4, make it 62 and 64. If it's 0 and 0, make it 60 and 60, etc
Submit your encode. It will take a while (even for 2 minutes, in most cases)
Evaluate your encode for the correct cropping (you might have to go back to FCP and adjust the scale values and/or centering) and whether you need to adjust the Anti-Alias and Details values in Compressor. Or, quite honestly, you might not think this is worth it. However, if this is a disc meant for replication, it usually is.
Personally, it takes me a few passes to get things right (Anti-Alias and Details being the hardest to pin down) but it's always worth it...
Let us know how it goes.

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Best way to present data?

Hi,
This is more of a design issue rather than a technical one, but I can't work out the best way to present this data but I thought someone here would have a good idea.
I want to graph with a line chart the capital growth of investments over time. I need to represent the initial capital (say $200,000). Then each quarter I need to chart the capital growth. ie. Q1 +$10,000 = $210,000, Q2 -$5,000 = $205,000, Q3 +$25,000 = $230,000 etc.
The quarterly profit/loss figures (ie +10,000, -5,000, +25,000 in the example above) are coming from the totals of other charts, but that shouldn't make a difference to the design/charting.
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Stuart

Stuart, since nobody else seemed to wait to give it a go, I'll pipe in. Not knowing your experience level, I might be giving you stuff you already know. Sorry if that's the case.
I do think it will be simpler if you create an intermediary table and hide it behind your chart. I'm going to assume you're only going to need to look at 4 quarters. I'm also assuming there's only one investment to chart. Our table will need 1 header column and 1 header row. 5 total columns (including header) and 3 total rows (including header).
I labeled the cells 2 - 5 of the header row "Q1" through "Q4"
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B2 through E2 should refer to the cells showing the gain/loss for the specific quarter. According to your example, the data shown should be $10,000, -$5000, $25,000 and whatever Q4 provides -- I put in -$40,000 to illustrate how an investment loss will show. Set them up as references (i.e. "=Sheet 2 :: Table 1 :: B2") so they'll update automatically.
Format rows 2 and 3 as currency with 0 decimal places.
Now put this formula in cell B3:
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With those same cells highlighted, click on charts and line charts for the basic chart. I do recommend using the inspector to change the Y axis Min and Max from "automatic" to values equidistant from your investment base (in this case, $200,000). I chose $240,000 and $160,000. Sadly, I'm not aware of any way to automate the handling of these values.
Now either place this table behind the graph, behind the original table, or slide it off to another page that you will not print.
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Hi there and thanks for reading. I don't post on this community often, so if there is better place for this question please point me there.
First a little about my project: I'm a student of fine arts and my current work involves the use of a projector and 2d and 3d objects. Projection mapping, or video mapping has been a budding art form for quite some time, but I do not use any of the current software applications that would be best for the medium. My current process begins by setting up a physical 2d or 3d composition in my studio space and projecting my PC desktop onto the scene with a common classroom style projector. I begin "mapping" objects in my studio with Illustrator, and then import my project to After Effects in order to animate my composition. If I set my project resolution to something that doesn't match my projector resolution and go to full screen, my software composition will not match my physical composition. After my project is complete and I'm ready to show visitors, I'll export a video and set it to loop.
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It depends entirely on what the projector does with the signal it receives. Most projectors will simply scale an incoming standard def signal to fill the entire frame. In which case, I'd simply author your project in 4:3 standard def (720x480), make sure the resulting DVD is 4:3 formatted, and that should do it.

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I've been quite encouraged by FR's new acceptance of DVDs as a source (place ripped DVD movie folders into your ~movies folder or aliases to DVD folder... they appear and play in FR). I have it set up so I can browse over 600 DVDs on various remote drives along with the preview picture (place DVD cover image named preview.jpg in the DVD folder, not the VIDEO_TS folder).
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macguyincali wrote:
I've been quite encouraged by FR's new acceptance of DVDs as a source (place ripped DVD movie folders into your ~movies folder or aliases to DVD folder... they appear and play in FR). I have it set up so I can browse over 600 DVDs on various remote drives along with the preview picture (place DVD cover image named preview.jpg in the DVD folder, not the VIDEO_TS folder).
It works great on my 50" Pioneer Elite hooked up to the networked MacMini, and I appear to get surround sound pass through as well.
The problem is that some DVD's I have are encoded in full screen (but in wide mode) so that the video, while actually in the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio, actually appears smaller than the screen so that there is a black border around the entire video. It plays fine, only smaller.
What you are describing here is 'letterboxed' widescreen. Personally I loath such DVDs and regard them as a stupid mistake by the movie studio. The correct sort of widescreen DVD is known as 'anamorphic'.
As mentioned, the Leopard DVD player now has the ability to 'zoom' the display to best fit your widescreen TV/Monitor. Unfortunately from what you say Front Row 2.0 (in Leopard) does not remember this or offer the ability to do this. In this case your only current realistic option is to see if your TV has an equivalent mode, my Sony Bravia has a button on the remote that cycles through several zoom options. If your TV has a similar option then it may be the easiest solution.
Otherwise, a less realistic option is to make your own custom DVD. I have in the past taken a letterboxed recording, cropped the image, and converted it to a proper anamorphic widescreen DVD. I used ffmpegX to do this on a Mac. In theory with a huge amount of work, one could also do this and keep the subtitles, multiple audio tracks and DVD extras but it is a huge amount of work and not all of it can be done using Mac tools, it can be done with the assistance of some free Windows tools, e.g. IfoEdit, and PGCEdit.
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A slightly different problem with aspect ratio and DVD Maker

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Hi,
There’s similar thread discuss the DVD maker for 4:3 or 16:9 you can refer:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpromedia/thread/cd5edb7b-a4dd-43c9-ae95-20ac5692b2c6
And I find someone has submit it as a bug to our website, if our development team recognize it was a bug, they will fix it on next update.
Thank you for your understanding.
Regards,
Leo Huang
TechNet Subscriber Support
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Best way to present compare/contrast in eLearning?

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How easy is it to produce videos in that (or any other) format that cannot be grabbed/downloaded?
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There is no "password protected" method for video files short of "media keys" (Sorenson software) but you can use password for entry to the Web pages that hold them.
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Is the a better way
No. You're doing what I do. Just had to change a friend's DVD player to 16:9 to play my widescreen project. In their case, the widescreen menu was chopped, but the video played OK before the change.
I am not sure family and friend could do this).
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Best way to present 1.55:1 aspect ratio on DVD?

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