I've shot all of my home movies (mostly theme park stuff) in 16:9 widescreen on my camera. That works out great for me because my home theater screen is 16:9. It doesn't work out so great for my friends and relatives who have regular 4:3 - when the video is put on their TVs the image is compressed horizontally. I would like to letterbox the video so it can be displayed without distortion on a 4:3 TV. I have Adobe Premiere, but haven't found anything in it to put the black bars on the video. Anyone know how I can do this? I'd really like to send out DVDs of this to my friends and family, but I don't want the image to look distorted.

thanks,
Bret

In Premiere, if you right click on the video clip and choose Video options, click on "Maintain Aspect Ratio". I'm doing this from memeory, so it may not be under video options, but you get the point.

Cheers,
Mark Jefferson

Set Premiere to 16x9 and then after it is on the time you need to change the vertical resolution. Reduce it by 75%, using one of the video filters. This should put it a letter box type form for output. You'll have to do a lot of rendering.

I can't speak specifically for Premiere, but it's my understanding that you don't need to do anything if you're putting anamorphic widescreen on a DVD (provided that it's flagged as such when you burn the DVD).

DVD players can automagically letterbox the footage for you if they're connected to a 4:3 TV set and properly configured. The DVD player should have a system menu item where you identify your TV as either 16:9 or 4:3. Set this properly and everything should be fine, that's one of the nice things about using DVD's.

If this isn't happening then I'd look at the settings in your DVD burning software, and also check the configuration of your relatives' DVD players. I'm working exclusively in 16:9 these days and have give DVD's to several people with 4:3 sets who all say they appear properly letterboxed.

<<<-- Originally posted by Boyd Ostroff : I can't speak specifically for Premiere, but it's my understanding that you don't need to do anything if you're putting anamorphic widescreen on a DVD (provided that it's flagged as such when you burn the DVD).
-->>>

how do i flag it?

This is done when you encode to MPEG2.

As long as you use a proper widescreen project settings in Premiere, and encode to MPEG2 there, Premiere should do it all for you.

What software are you using to author the DVD? You may need to set some properties there too - it all depends on what software you have...

Julian

I have a program called "My DVD" by Sonic - very basic program. I'm looking at getting something else. any recomendations?

Try DVD-lab at
http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/