Anamorphic 854x480 to DVD best practices: Slap some sense into me

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kyotonils

Well-known member
I'm using a Panasonic DVC30 in 16:9 squeeze mode, rendering out 854 x 480 sequences that work nicely on the web at any size. When I want to output to DVD, I make a 720 x 480 sequence and nest my sequences into it, creating a letterbox sequence. I then burn an SD DVD and this plays back nicely letterboxed on an SD TV, and an HD TV is smart enough to detect letterbox and resize it, but some HD TVs have a jumpy effect where they momentarily show it distorted, and then correctly zoom in to the letterboxed content and show it at the correct aspect ratio.

HERE IS MY QUESTION: Am I doing this right? By nesting the 854x480 in an SD sequence, it loses some resolution I would definitely like to hang on to if I could, but I've read that there is no such thing as a 854 x 480 DVD, so my only other choice is to uprez to HD, right?
 
Are you absolutely sure you made this anamorphic? You said "creating a letterbox sequence", which implies that you put black borders on the image - this is not anamorphic.

This would look good on an SDTV, though HDTVs may zoom on the image by default, OR, they may have "intelligent" auto cropping, that zooms in to the portion that the TV detects as the image. It's meant to deal with varying aspect ratios in the same video, but it's often seen as the TV "guessing" the ratio. The TV shouldn't have to do this if there is no letterbox.

The fact that you're nesting your sequences into another 720x480 sequence should not be necessary. Exporting a straight 720x480 image from your original sequence (Squeezed) should be fine. By nesting it, you're probably creating the letterbox, which is the complete opposite of what you want.
 
Thanks for your comment, and sorry I'm late getting back to you. The reason I used letterbox is because no matter what kind of widescreen dvd I made with iDVD, it didn't letterbox it on my DVD player and 4:3 TV. It showed the widescreen video at full height and simply cut off the sides, even though commercial widescreen DVDs show fine. I exported a new version as you specify, and bought a new DVD player, in case my player was the problem. I'm going to try again tomorrow and see if I can solve this.

Thanks again for your comments and advice.
 
kyotonils said:
Thanks for your comment, and sorry I'm late getting back to you. The reason I used letterbox is because no matter what kind of widescreen dvd I made with iDVD, it didn't letterbox it on my DVD player and 4:3 TV. It showed the widescreen video at full height and simply cut off the sides, even though commercial widescreen DVDs show fine. I exported a new version as you specify, and bought a new DVD player, in case my player was the problem. I'm going to try again tomorrow and see if I can solve this.

Thanks again for your comments and advice.
Click to expand...

Was iDVD configured to show the footage as 16x9 though?
 
Yes, it was. There is no "anamorphic" setting for iDVD, but it is a widescreen project, the theme is widescreen and Project info pane confirms this. We're stuck in torrential rain today, so I'm gong to buckle down and solve this today, come Hell or high water, and we've already got the high water. I've got a stack of 50 DVDs and a fire under me. Thanks for your help. I'll report back.
 
Sense duly slapped. Thanks you for your prodding. Thanks to the aforementioned rain, I had a whole day to work on it, and I now have a solid procedure and perfectly-formatted DVDs in their jewel cases, with labels and inserts printed. I exactly noted the procedure so I don't ever have to go through that guessing game again. I'm going to make a screencast to explain it, because the same question is asked all over the place, but with limited success perhaps because each step depends on the one before.

Here it is:
This is for outputting an NTSC DVD in iDVD from anamorphic SD (854x480) source files in Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro, so that the DVD plays properly on a Widescreen 16:9 TV and automatically goes into letterbox on a 4:3 TV.

Edit in Final Cut using eASY SETUP option "NTSC DV-NTSC Anamorphic"
From FC, output reference movie sequences at DV/NTSC-Anamorphic.
They will look right in Quicktime 10 player, Inspector window (in Quicktime 10) will show: Format: DV, 720x480 (853x480). at the bottom it will show: Current size: 853x480 pixels (actual).

If you use the in Quicktime 7 Inspector window will show: Format: DV, 720x480 (853x480) Normal size: 873x480 pixels Current size: 873x480 pixels (actual) .

Is that crazy or what? Different QT players report it as different sizes. You are entering a dimension of mind. Stay with me. I read a lot of advice to use QT7 Pro to change the size, and this is how I burned through a stack of test DVDs and got only heartache and weird, squishy videos. If you were successful, congratulations, but here is what worked for me.

Put this reference file into an iDVD Widescreen project. You are awesome! yeah, look at that, smooth as- oh, No! it happened again! the sequences play in iDVD squished down to 640 width and 480 tall. Maybe this is what "anamorphic means, and it will play OK, you think. In short, No.

It's 640x480, but you are STILL fine. Build your DVD using these wacky, squishy sequences from Final Cut. When you are all done (you are periodically saving, right?) Go into the iDVD file menu, go down to the bottom, and select "save as video TS folder."

This is awesome, because there are NO options to screw up in saving a DVD as a VIDEO_TS folder. None. You are golden. Stick with me, here's the fun part.

While it is exporting, go to http://www.mydvdedit.com/ and download the program called myDVDEdit. Open it, go to the File -->Open... menu and navigate to your VIDEO_TS folder. Open the thing. Get your VTS1 on! Click VTS1 on the left, and then click VTS1 in the vertical menu in the main window. Drag the slider in the preview window to the right to confirm the squishy nature of your footage.

Right there! Do you see that? Aspect 4:3? You shot anamorphic, you edited anamorphic, you exported anamorphic, and imported into a widescreen project, and still you get this crap? Get your **** together, iDVD developer team!

So this Frenchy guy, Baron Frenchy Jérôme Cabanis Dauphin, made this great program to help you fix your project, and here's the magic: select 16:9 auto letterbox. Ta-da! Look at the preview window! It's perfect!

A dialog pops up: "The video aspect ratio is not the same as the stream one. Do you want to correct the VOB files? This operation can be long if the number of object is large."

Hell yes you do. (It's not long, by the way. For my 2-hour movie it took only a couple minutes.) Repeat this for each VTS file, not the others.

This procedure is documented here: http://www.mydvdedit.com/viewtutorial.php?t=27e&pg=forum

Why isn't that a dropdown or checkbox in iDVD? Make sure you donate to Frenchy via PayPal button, considering how great this is. Apple, pay Cabanis half a million bucks and put this in iDVD, OK? He deserves it.

Now, save your file. Guess what, you can even preview it in DVD Player (in the File Menu) right from Frenchy's app. I love you Frenchy. It looks just right.

Now you've got a video TS folder that's properly aspect rated. Can you import it back into iDVD? What handles a Video TS folder? Why, TOAST will fix you right up. You are set. Burn that disc! You are good to go!
 
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