Widescreen export weirdness, any ideas?

John C Lyons

John C Lyons

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I made a short. shot it in 24pa, squeeze mode. edited with premiere pro. exported in mpeg2 as 16x9 wide. designed dvd menus in encore.

in timeline for the short it says its 16x9. the menus are 4x3. i make the dvd.

tested it on an xbox connected to regular (not widescreen and no special settings) tv, an apex dvd deck connected to regular tv, and of course pc. plays back the way i want it with black bars at top and bottom of frame.

i send it to my buddy, he plays it on 3 tvs varying from old to new HD widescreen, each one of them crops the image (no black bars and sides are "cut" off).

anyone ever get this? i tried it on a 4th tv and its doing the cropping as well...
 
Re: Widescreen export weirdness, any ideas?

Well for anyone that has this problem we figured it out: user error. Basically all the DVD players that cropped the image were set for 4:3 Pan & Scan in their settings.

So for future reference, if someone isnt getting your widescreen image, and you are, its most likely they need to go into the DVD player options (not while the dvd is playing) and change it to 4:3 Widescreen/Letterbox for example.

HA!
 
Re: Widescreen export weirdness, any ideas?

I wonder if alot of DVD decks are set to P&S by default?

If so that really sucks because most people would care less to go in there and tinker around...
 
Re: Widescreen export weirdness, any ideas?

I author DVDs professionally.
Most DVD players made since Fall have a type of "smart" chip installed... which will detect the movie if it is 16:9 or 4x3. So it may detect it automatically. But sometimes not. Most people do not know how to set their DVD video preference, so they don't bother to learn. Who wants to press the menu/options button on the DVD player blank screen? :) People just don't want to learn to mess with that stuff.

Also, alot of new widescreen TVs have a display button on their remotes which will change the view on the fly. As 4x3, fit to full, or widescreen.
 
Re: Widescreen export weirdness, any ideas?

That's cool. Thanks for the updates WaveRiderXIX.

It's actually surprising that they JUST started installing these smart chips in players. DVD players have been around for almost 10 years, about time!

I have decided to make up a tiny card to give to each person that buys the DVD with a note about setting up their player properly. Most people apparently just don't care, but when they see the title screen come up and it says "UNTING CAM" I would think it would click that something needs configured properly.
 
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