Friends,
I have a seemingly simple question which I have searched on this forum and others, and which has been much discussed here, but which I have yet to find fully answered:
In the past I've just output my HDV stuff as letterboxed 4:3 DVDs, but now I want to produce widescreen DVDs. So, I set up DVDSP (as per Ken Stone's instructions) to author my Compressor Widescreen Mpeg2 files for 16:9 display. So far, so good, the menus are all 16:9, and Simulator displays the content correctly. The test DVDs play back beautifully in DVD Player on my computers, but when I play them on a set top DVD player, the image is stretched horizontally. And yet when I play any studio-produced DVD, my player knows exactly how to display the image properly. I've seen some of you mentioning "flagging" the asset when authoring in order to tell the DVD players how to display the image, but Ken Stone doesn't seem to mention this step. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks,
- Jim
YouTube - navispictures's Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/navispictures#p/u/0/1Pzo9cHVxr8)

What format is the TV being fed from your set-top DVD player? (4:3 or 16:9?)

Is the set-top DVD Player configured to the correct display aspect ratio of your TV?

In Compressor, I assume you're using an m2v preset with the Aspect Ratio=16:9 to encode your HDV tracks?

In DVDSP, have you set all your Menus to Display Mode=16:9 Letterbox** in the Inspector Panel?

Have you also set all your Tracks to Display Mode=16:9 Letterbox** in the Inspector Panel?

( ** This is a confusingly labelled error in DVDSP - if you ask me. It's NOT actually "16:9 Letterbox", it's anamorphic, which is what you want. The other choices are "4:3", "16:9 Pan-Scan", "16:9 Pan-Scan & Letterbox" - all three of which are wrong for what you want.)

TV format fed from your set-top DVD player - 16:9 32" 720p LCD HDTV

Set-top DVD Player configured to the correct display aspect ratio of your TV - Yes

In Compressor, using m2v preset with 16:9 Aspect Ratio to encode - Yes

All DVDSP Menus and tracks set to Display Mode 16:9 Letterbox in the Inspector Panel - Yes

OK, I'm out of suggestions!! :)

""I've just output my HDV stuff as letterboxed 4:3 DVDs""
but that is widescreen :-) too , if it is letterboxed, it just isnt using all the possible resolution you could have by being a squeeze that plays as a letterbox on 3:4 or full screen on a 16x9 display.


"when I play them on a set top DVD player, the image is stretched horizontally"

there must be a clue here, if it is STRETCHED horizontally on a 16x9 then it is indeed playing AS a 16x9 RIGHT? but the material is not the squeesed 16x9 aspect (anamorfic) to begin with?

The end encoded pictures should contain ALL of the 16x9 data resized into the 720x480 pixels (for NTSC) , then the dvd is told that the aspect is 16x9, at no time are you trying to clip , crop or hack it into a 3:4 , so from what you said (which is confusing) it sounds like you need to see what is THERE in the 720x480 pixels, is the whole 16x9 image there?

if the menues are 16x9, then on simulation did the aspect of the menus MATCH the aspect of the video (aspect and general size).

Does it matter that my footage and sequence is 1440X1080 (HDV) from XHA-1?

the "Pixel aspect" of 1440 IS different than 1920 , but no, if you resize to 720 and set or tag the aspect correctally it wont mater if those 720 pixels were orignally 1440 or 1920 , either way as long as all those 1440 pixels are shrunk to the 720 it is 720 still at that end point.

so you have your original 16x9 1440x1080 , and if you squeeze that to 720x480 and didnt clip, crop, or box any aspect of it the aspect when TOLD TO DISPLAY at 16x9 will still be correct.
just like shrinking a picture, just a lot of them.