Aspect Ratios and DVD Architect

J

Jason K

Active member
The following is taken from a cached forum topic I found on Google while trying to find the solution to this same problem:

I had some footage on a DVD that was 2.40 aspect ratio. As you know, this is wider than widescreen (16:9). The result is large black bars generated on a 4:3 TV and small black bars generated on a 16:9 tv. I captured this video from my DVD player through the capture card into Vegas. Playing it at 16:9 (which is the best I can do), it captured the video with the small black bars included.

After editing it and then rendering to WS NTSC video, taking it into DVD architect and exporting a DVD with menu, it comes out the correct ratio, like it should....but....This is a 16:9 video with small black bars built into it. The problem is that when you play it back on a 4:3 TV you see the video, the built in black bars and the black bars that the TV itself renders to fit the video onscreen. TV's render anything from totally black to very grey bars....this clashes with the built in black bars. It's very distracting to see two different tones of bars around the video.

So, I tried cropping the clip from 720x480 to 720x363.63 and adjusting the project settings and rendering a file that size. This works - it renders a file of the correct size and porpotions which houses only the video itself and no black bars, so theoretically if you played it back on a TV - no matter WS or regular it would have to render the bars for whatever area is missing and therefore it would be uniform. Ok, so now the editing process is done correctly....

The only problem is DVD Architect. It freaks out and does not recognize any video which isn't any one of four different sizes (4:3, 16:9, pal or pal WS). It insists on recompressing the video to 16:9 which basically gives it an anomorphic stretch. This is not desirable because it doesn't look good on this footage and I can't afford the recompression time.

Does anyone know how to make DVD architect accept different aspect ratios? Or do I need to use some other authoring software? If so, what software can do this? There must be a way to author in these aspect ratios, because there's a ton of movies with them out there. Thank you so much if you can help.

First, here's a list of things I've already tried or that won't be options:

-I am NOT going to edit VOB files in womble.

-I am NOT going to convert mpg to avi and edit that.

-I know DVD isn't the greatest input source, but that's what I have to work with and that's what I'm going to do.

-I am not going to make a mask for the clip for the black bars. Every TV generates a different color - some black - and some grey and no matter what I do they won't match everyone's tv.

-I already tried cropping the clip down to where there are no black bars and rendering a normal 16:9 file. This is the same problem with the mask....it won't match every TV and everyone's different brightness settings.

-I cannot just adjust the settings on my TV until they match. This product will be seen by hundreds of different people and I can't just tell them to adjust their sets.

-I cannot just make a fake widescreen disc, because I want this to play on both kinds of TVs. I also cannot make two different versions.

-I already tried replacing the VOB of that file with the original MPG of the correct size....that's not going to happen, apparently.
Click to expand...

David Jimmerson said:
There's a workaround.

All anamorphic video burned on a DVD -- and this includes Hollywood DVDs, too -- is 16:9.

If a movie is 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 or 2.40:1 or wider, black bars are part of the picture. This is as true of the "Star Wars" DVDs as it is of the project I just burned yesterday.

The problem comes when viewing on a 4:3 TV. When you do this, most DVD players are set at default to letterbox anamorphic (widescreen) video. That is to say, the player will squish the anamorphic picture down to its proper 16:9 proportion and then add black on the top and bottom to fill the rest of the 4:3 screen.

These bars, at least in North America, are 7.5 IRE to match the NTSC standard of every 4:3 TV. Which is to say, they're a little bit gray and not true black.

If you crop the footage on your timeline to 2.40:1, what you're really doing is reveailing the empty timeline below. That timeline is black, but true black, 0 IRE black.

You render as widescreen, you get a 16:9 image with 0 IRE bars as part of that image.

The DVD player inserts 7.5 IRE bars above and below, and they look gray next to the 0 IRE black. You end up with those black-black bands. They can really stand out.

So, what you need to do is make those black bars -- which you can't avoid having in the picture -- match the bars the DVD player will add. So you have to make them 7.5 IRE.

You can do this a couple of ways. You can use a mask, but the easiest way I've found is to do the 2.40:1 crop, and then go to the Media Generator and lay a solid color UNDER the video. Use a black solid, but then go into its properties and change the R, G, and B values to 16 instead of 0. This is the digital equivalent of 7.5 IRE.

Assuming you're working in a widescreen project, the black card generated will automatically be 16:9. If you're working in a 4:3 project, crop it to 16:9. But it has to be 16:9 in order to fill out the image.

This will increase render time, but it will get rid of the black banding you're seeing.
Click to expand...

According to my Waveform monitor, the default black is -7.5 IRE. When I made R G and B 16, it claimed that was at 0 IRE. When I made it R, G and B 32, it claimed it was 7.5 IRE. Since my goal according to that post was to get it to 7.5, I burned that. What happens is my default DVD player bars end up blacker than the 16x9 letterbox bars. So I have, in this order: Dark black (from DVD player), light black (from letterbox) then the picture.

Now when I simply apply Computer RGB to Studio RGB to the black in Color Corrector, as David said to on this forum in another post, I get 17.5 IRE.

Regardless, does anyone know how to accomplish what needs to be accomplished here? It works for David and the original user so it must be something user-specific to me.
 
To the best of my abilities; I wouldn't say I'm exactly certified when it comes to working with color bars but anyway, shouldn't that not matter if the real goal is to match the letterbox black with the DVD player black? If the display wasn't properly set up, shouldn't two blacks of the same colors appear the same regardless?
 
Also to note, I did try doing 16, 16, 16 like David said to, regardless of my waveform saying that was 0 IRE. The result was a darker black, but still not as dark as the bars my DVD player creates.
 
Jason K said:
To the best of my abilities; I wouldn't say I'm exactly certified when it comes to working with color bars but anyway, shouldn't that not matter if the real goal is to match the letterbox black with the DVD player black? If the display wasn't properly set up, shouldn't two blacks of the same colors appear the same regardless?
Click to expand...

It depends, im not an expert in NTSC workspace, but you can have two different levels of black in a video that both looks like total black if your display is correctly calibrated.

Video should not show the 16 lowest shades of black and the 16 highest shades of white once you calibrate your display.

But do you have a 4:3 display that you feed with a 16:9 signal. Or do you have a 4:3 display that you feed with a 4:3 signal?
 
It's a 4:3 displaying a 16x9.

My concern with that is that most people don't have a properly calibrated display, so it'll appear wrong to them regardless. Is there not some way to achieve the same DVD player default black?
 
The workflow quoted above assumes that you don't any any global color correction -- i.e., color correction to the preview window, or to the track containing the black card. This will change the characteristics of the black card.

In any case, since I posted that a long time ago, I've since determined that the simplest way of doing it is not using a black card, but a fade envelope.

Go into Options>Preferences>Video. Go to the bottom and click on the Track Fade Bottom color. Change THOSE values to 16, 16, 16.

Then, in your project, create a video track under everything else, right-click, choose "Insert/remove envelope" and choose "Fade to color." Drag the node all the way to the bottom.

Now, as I say, do NOT apply any color correction or other effects globally. This track must be kept free of any effects.

I have never seen this method fail.
 
I didn't do any global color correction, but I'll try your latest suggested method when I get home tonight. Thanks a lot, can't wait to try it.
 
Also try and setup your DVD to send out a 4:3 signal instead of a 16:9 and se if there is any difference.
 
Okay, here are some notes that might help you guys identify what my problem is.

+ According to my waveform monitor, my empty timeline is approx. -8 IRE by default. Any new, completely unedited project I begin has an empty timeline default of approx. -8 IRE.

+ When I apply the Track Fade Bottom technique, it gives me an empty timeline of approx. 18 IRE.

Now I can manipulate the node to give me 7.5 IRE (that is, at least according to my waveform monitor [I'm using Vegas' built in monitors]), but the fact remains 7.5 is still a bit lighter than my DVD player's default bars.
 
Well, if you go into the video scope settings and check both 7.5 IRE Setup and Studio RGB, the waveform should give you 0 for default black and 7.5 for the 16, 16, 16 color envelope.

But that's just the scope display and shouldn't affect the video.

How are you rendering to get to DVD?
 
Ahhh! The 7.5 IRE Setup wasn't checked. So that solves that. Default black is now 0. But when I drag the color envelope node to the bottom like you said, I get approx. 24 IRE.

I'm rendering DVD Architect mpeg2 for 16x9.
 
This is what I have; perhaps you can note if something is wrong:

trackbottom.gif
 
No. Even if I start a brand new project from total scratch, I get those same results. No global effects. It's a real head scratcher. By the way, I really appreciate you helping me with this.
 
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