XL2/Premiere Pro 1.5 to DVD problem

[Jason Debus]

I can't seem to figure out why the DVDs I burn play fine on my PC but are 'zoomed' on consumer DVD players. The red area shows approximately how much it's zoomed when played on regular DVD player:

 

 

Anyone have any idea where I'm going wrong here?

[Jay Gladwell]

This is not an issue with your XL2. You really should post this question elsewhere.

[Zamir Merali]

Most TV's have whats called an aspect ratio setting that you can choose. A lot of brodcast tv is in 4:3 so the tv has to blow it up to fill the entire wide screen. Find a button on your remote that says aspect and push it a few times until the picture is the way you want it.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

It might not be as simple as just setting the TV aspect (though it might).

 

I presume from the image you're after a widescreen DVD having shot widescreen on the XL2. You need to check that everything's correctly set at every stage - that you're shooting wide, capturing wide, importing wide to a widescreen DVD project, and that you don't have any odd conversion options set in the DVD authoring program.

 

Double check all this stuff too. What you're seeing is an artifact of it being cropped horizontally to fill 4:3, then zoomed in on a widescreen TV to fill 16:9. It's not an uncommon fault to find, unfortunately.

 

Phil

[Jason Debus]

I thought it was something like DVD player or display settings too and ignored it (this was viewing on a 16:9 plasma in '16:9' mode not 'zoom' mode) but then my main actor complained that he was getting cut off vertically in the copy I sent him, but it was fine on his computer. To confuse the situtation further it played fine on another friends system that has a DVD to 16:9 display via component video.

 

I'll do some more tests at my work where we have a couple of different DVD players and see if I can narrow it down to a DVD setting. The players that display this problem play anamorphic DVDs fine so it almost feels like I'm not encoding it right.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

This can be a very complicated subject. If you have seen it play correctly, then you are at least not munging the video physically before it goes on the disc. However, you might still not have the flags set correctly; you could have squeezed 16:9 video into 4:3 on the disc, which will look OK if you set the display to force widescreen but won't work if:

 

- The display is in force-4:3

- The display is in auto and this function is supported by both the display, the interconnect and the player and you have set the disc to be 4:3.

- The display is in auto but this function is not supported by either the dispaly, the player or the interconnect, and the auto mode defaults to 4:3.

- The DVD player is set to expect a display with an aspect ratio other than what the display actually has.

 

You need to be very careful about interpreting people saying "it looks right." Many people are quite happy to stretch 4:3 to fit 16:9 displays and have everyone look short, fat and circles be elliptical. Often this is happily reported as normal when obviously it's wrong as all hell.

 

However.

 

Computers are often useful test devices because they tend to intrinsically scale the playback window to fit the video mode that's set on the disc. If you can play it back on a computer with the aspect ratio set to "auto", "native", "detect from disc" or whatever and it is correct (right aspect ratio, circles still circular, no cropping) then your disc is probably correct and people have their systems set up wrong. This is unfortunately far more common than the alternative.

 

For things to work out, you need:

 

- Video correctly shot (camera in right aspect ratio)

- Video correctly captured (capture software maintains aspect ratio flags in DV data)

- Disc properties set correctly in mastering software

- Video correctly imported and not set to be altered (especially where this may be a default)

- DVD player set to expect a display of the correct aspect ratio, or set to automatically switch the display where this is supported by the player, the display and the interconnect

- Display set to the same aspect ratio that the DVD player has been told to expect, or set to auto where this is supported, and with no zoom, crop or other special options set.

 

Best of luck.

 

Phil