Menu not displaying in 16 x 9 using DVD Maestro

[f@chance]

I have done my first DVD and was dissapointed that it did not display in 16 x 9 on my Widescreen TV. The menu backgraound was cut of at the safe area in the DVD Maestro menu editor. I had ticked the box that says 16 x 9. Any idea why the 720 x 480 menu did not show in full width on the screen. I hat to distort the picture into the safe area just so that on the wide screen TV it stretches from side to side.

It display correctly when played on the PC with Power DVD.


Thanks

F@Chance

[auenf]

what aspect ratio was you movie?

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[f@chance]

The DVD project I am trying to do is importing like 9 Enterprise episodes MPEG 1 which are all according to FlaskMPeg 4:3 ratio even though they are broadcast in widescreen. I guess the person that encoded them chose letter box so that it can be viewed on a 4:3 TV.

However I was just talking about the Play First menu. I expected that to appear in full glory and width. My player has 3 settings

Auto "Cuts off top an side of the menu background at the safe zone.

Pan & Scan "which gives me full hight but no change in width."

Letter Box "which gives me big black borders top and bottom but I again get the full hight but no change in the width."

In the property settings of the DVD Project it lists 525/60 (NTSC) and for the 16x9 I have Force To letter box ticked.

Is it possible to use IFOEdit to change the IFO file to 16x9. The only other way I can see it is to add black borders on top & bottom and than when I play it I have the correct hight and a squashed picture that will expand in Wide Screen mode.

Any help is appreciated.

F@Chance

[auenf]

if your only VTS is 4:3 (16:9 with the black bars, true 16:9 is horizontally compressed/anamorphic) then your menus have to be 4:3, same if you only have 16:9 VTS'

your DVD player should have 3 settings for you tv type, 16:9 tv, pan&scan and Letterbox, for a 16:9 tv, you pick the first option, for a 4:3 tv you can pick either of the other two, but if your dvd doesnt have pan&scan info, then it gets shown in letterbox anyway.

if you VTS is 4:3 and your tv 16:9, you are going to see black bars on the sides (and if the footage is 16:9 letterbox in the 4:3 frame, you will get bars on all sides unless your 16:9 tv has a zoom option or such)

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[f@chance]

Thanks for the help to this point it is getting clearer. Plese stay with the thought for a bit.

I have a 16x9 TV my player's output is set to 16x9. The 9 episodes are not compressed/anamorphic the TV is a Sony and it has a Smart feature that fills out the width and stretches a bit to height, it has a zoom feature that plays the episodes back in full width & height and than it has a wide setting filling out the width but not the height and finally it has a 4x3 setting.

In 4x3 all black borders arround in zoom feature full width and height with loosing a bit on the top and bottom. like half the UPN DOG that appears in the bottom right corner. I am happy with the movie images and there is nothing that I can do about it. The menu images is what I am trying to get.

So let me see if I get this write because the 9 VTS_??_?.* files are all 4x3 the menus also will have to be 4x3. If I want to have 16x9 menus will using DVD Patcher to patch the movies to 16x9 help? Or will I have to compressed my menues (like distort them) so that they will expand in 16x9 mode? Since I have a 720 x 480 picture by what number of pixels would I have to compress the width to get 16x9 width?

Thanks for sticking with me on this one.

F@Chance

[auenf]

if i remember correctly, your menu aspect ratio has to corespond with a VTS aspect ratio, can be any VTS, so cause all your VTS' are 4:3, your menu needs to be 4:3 as well.

as for the 720x480 menu size, that is the size for both 4:3 and 16:9 menus, just the 16:9 menus are animorphic (horizontally compressed), and basically create the menu at 848x480 and resize it to 720x480 before importing it into your authoring program

what you can do is just add another VTS that is just a 16:9 logo or something, then you'll be able to use 16:9 menu (well, you should be able to).

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