DVD troubles with resolution and aspect ratios....

[Mark Swanson]

I recorded some video with my cable DVR and imported it into VS7 with no issues. I've edited it, and now I want to burn it to a DVD. OK...when the original video was aired it was a low resolution, and shown at a 4:3 aspect ratio. Not great quality really....and so to avoid a stretched out and distorted DVD, I want to render it and produce the DVD to show the video with that same aspect ratio- I have tried everything I can but no matter how i burn it, my DVD player always shows it at a 16:9 ratio and it looks terrible to me and it's driving me nuts. I fully admit to my newbie status here, and you folks have always helped me out but there seems to be something I am not getting. I've been rendering it down at 720x 480 with a 4:3 aspect but every time I try that it still fills the whole screen on my TV, all stretched out. I can play the video back on a computer and it looks like it is supposed to. Here's one of the videos - http://vimeo.com/98190823
I have to leave town for a day, but I'll be back in sunday evening to check in here again so thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!

[rwernyei]

Mark,

If I am following you correctly, the original aired footage was SD 4:3 and you have created a SD 4:3 DVD. Are you viewing your SD 4:3 DVD on a 16:9 TV? If so, it is very likely you have both your DVD player and TV set for 16:9 viewing, which would be correct thus stretching the picture to fill the screen. By changing the format with your TV remote to Narrow this should put black bars on the sides and display at the proper aspect ratio.

Hope this helps.
Robert

[BrianCee]

If you want it to show correctly on your TV without changing the settings of your player or TV then you need to make a 16:9 DVD

There are ways to do it - one is to start a 16:9 project and put a 16:9 colour block in the top track to fill the screen and then put your 4:3 video in the overlay track and adjust the size to fit to top to bottom - that way you get the video at 4:3 with coloured bars each side filling the screen.

do the same but put an image at 16:9 into the top track so that what shows at the edges is relevant to the video - along the lines of the attachment below.

You could crop your video to 16:9 but you will lose some of the top and/or the bottom of the picture.

Another way is to start a 16:9 project and put your video in the top track and stretch it to fit side to side - then put the video again into the overlay track and keep that at 4:3 - which will give you an effect like this :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJf4hpKctj0