aspect ratio problem

[jakewoodblues]

Man...I'm getting frustrated!

I have made dvd compilations of letterboxed tv series with no problems, but now I am trying to make a dvd of a letterboxed movie and am having a HUGE problem.

The movie shows as compressed on the screen, like a pinched together pan & scan. I've tried playing with the output settings, but they are only seem to be accessable for widescreen tv's. Regular 4:3 tv settings are locked.

I need to know what to do to get the aspect ratio letterboxed correctly.

Please help

Thanks

[DVDDoug]

...but now I am trying to make a dvd of a letterboxed movie...

I have no idea what's wrong, but if this movie was captured from a VHS tape, it should be identical to the TV broadcasts. It should be a regular 4x3 image with black bars across the top & bottom. Workshop doesn't "know" there are black bars... it's just a regular 4x3 image.

If you play that letterboxed DVD on a widescreen TV, the image will be shrunk-down and it will have black bars on all 4 sides! You can "fix" that with the DVD player's (or TV's) zoom control.

Commercial widescreen DVDs are not letterboxed. When you set-up the DVD player for a standard TV, the black bars are generated by the DVD player.

If you wanted to, you could use video editing software to crop-off the black bars, change the aspect ratio, and convert it to a 16x9 widescreen version. (The original image inside the letterbox may not be exactly 16x9.)