After burning, movie squashed into left half of screen.

[jimbobmij]

Hi,
I'm totally new to dvd authoring etc (this was my forst project) and I'm at work right now so I don't have details about files used etc. Hopefully I've made an easily recognisable mistake.

I created a DVD project with 2 levels of menus and 4 movie files (downloaded from the internet, i think they were all AVIs. The menu's and movies all worked fine when previewed in the 'Finish' section.

I burned the project onto a DVD using the template that gave the most play time, 'Extended Play' I think it was called and it completed with no error messages. However, when I viewed the DVD in Windows Media Player the problem showed up.

When the initial 20 second 'Play first' clip played it was squashed into the left half of the screen. I switched to fullscreen mode and the menu screen displayed full width. Then I tried viewing a clip from the menu and it was squashed into the left half of the screen and I could still see half the menu screen on the right side. I also tried going to the second menu and playing a clip from there and got the same thing except the right side of the screen flickered between the two menus while the squashed movie played on the left.

I'm using DVD Workshop 2 and havn't applied any patches. I don't know the build# or any other details about the version.

Sorry about the lack of technical details. If more info is needed I can run home and have a look at lunchtime

Any ideas what I've done wrong?
Thanks in advance for any help,
J.

[IronS]

Hi J,

First of all I would recommand not to use the Extended play. Seach this forum for best viewing quality on DVD.
Second: Try to play the DVD on a TV (not via the computer but by means of a DVD player. Does the problem still excists?

Regards,
Erik

[DVDDoug]

...downloaded from the internet, i think they were all AVIs.

Workshop is having trouble converting your files to MPEG-2 as required for a DVD.

Try converting your files to MPEG-2 with SUPER (FREE!!!). The detailed MPEG-2 settings depend on where you live (NTSC or PAL country) and if your movie is fullscreen or wide screen. The bitrate will determine the file size and video quality. Take a look at Workshop's Templates to get the correct resolution and framerate.

AVI is simply a "container" format, and it can contain audio/video in any format. There is a code in the AVI file header that tells the software... that's supposed to tell software... which CODEC to use, in order to decompress the video.

There are many compression methods/formats, and many variations of each format. The more compressed formats cause the most trouble when you try to edit or convert them. People who work with DivX, Xvid, MPEG-4, MOV, WMV, etc. seem to have lots of trouble. If you download files from the Net, you are likely to encounter a new challenge with each new file you try to convert.

I created a DVD project with 2 levels of menus and 4 movie files

Four full-movies is usually way too much for a single-layer DVD. (Most commercial DVDs are dual-layer.)

The more you squeeze (lower the bitrate) the worse the quality gets. 90 Minutes of video (with compressed Dolby audio) is ideal for a single-layer DVD. When you push it much beyond 2 hours, you may start to notice the video quality degradation, especially if you use uncompressed LPCM audio.

Since your downloaded files are probably over-compressed already, you might be able to "push it" a bit more. But, I wouldn't try putting 4 movies on a DVD.


NOTE - Converting video from one format to another requires the video to be de-compressed and re-compressed. This degrades the video quality to some extent. All of these compression schemes use lossy compression. (Data is thrown away during compression.) There was some quality loss when the original DVD was made (assuming these movies came from DVDs). There was more loss when the file was re-compressed for the Internet. There will be loss again when you convert it back to MPEG-2. (A high bitrate will minimize the loss.)

Hopefully I've made an easily recognisable mistake.

It might be a mistake to make DVDs from downloaded movies...

Each move might take a few hours (or many hours) of trial & error experimentation to get the audio and video converted correctly.

If these are regular commercially released movies, its a copyright violation. And when you're all done, you still end-up with a 2nd rate DVD.

[jimbobmij]

The movies (actually old tv shows, 50 mins each) were compressed using 'DivX 6.2.2 Codec (1 Logical CPU)' @ 448x336 according to DVD Workshop.
For the record, they burned OK (but with considerable quality loss) when I used the Long play 180min template with the frame size changed from 352x480 to 720x480.

Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to reply. I think I'll have a play with SUPER now to see if I can reduce the quality loss.