Aspect and Audio Question

[Imjin]

Hello all.

I've backed up my copy of the wide-screen CenterStage (for the wife..) and gotten it to work great on the set-top player. I IFOEdit'd it down and ReMPEG'd it to size. I used the crappy MyDVD since I don't have anything other than that little thing to do 16:9 movies. I have SpruceUp, but its limited to 4:3. I dropped the Dolby Digital 5.1 track down to an .AC3 and converted it to MP3 (for MyDVD) with BeSweet.

The 5.1 audio sounds fine, but my audio receiver on the TV setup doesn't seem to display the normal 6 speakers on the display like I normally get with a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround DVD. I'm not too worried about it, just think its odd.

The video is whats bugging me. It came out fine and looks pretty close to the original quality and all wide-screen and whatnot. The wierd thing is, its wide-screen and I can see the wide-screen format, but its a bigger wide-screen than the original, so I lose parts off both the left and right sides of the picture. Like credits for instance, they're chopped off in parts and extend past the screen area. When I viewed the movie, prior to converting to M2V and authoring with MyDVD, it looked normal on the PC.

I used IFOEdit, DVD2AVI for the .AC3, ReMPEG to create the .M2V, and MyDVD (which I hate) to author and burn the thing. Is MyDVD hosing it up somehow?

[mmorris]

This is in reference to your 16:9 and Spruceup. You say you have Spruceup and you can use this for 16:9. You just have to use IFOEdit after authoring to change the aspect ratio to 16:9. Spruceup keeps the aspect but the IFO file for the main VOB will say 4:3. See the post on this (search for Spruceup AND 16:9 and that should bring it up). It's a pretty simple edit. I've done this and gotten AC3 into the backup and works well. The only problem I have is my audio is lower level than the original. Still searching for why this is and how I can adjust the volume level up. I don't like MyDVD either. I got it with my Pioneer A04 burner and it doesn't allow you to do much. Have ReelDVD trial, which works for 30 days that I've looked at but haven't quite figured it out yet. Not sure it's worth $1500 to me anyhow as Spruceup works alright. Just need to get this audio thing figured out.

I also wondered if your audio is really playing in 5.1? You say your TV doesn't show the 6 speakers. If you convert the AC3 to MP3, doesn't this lose the 5.1 ability? I've never tried conversion to MP3 but didn't think it would keep the surround in that format.

On the chopping off of your widescreen version. What type of TV do you have? Is your DVD set correctly for the TV display? Does your movie (assuming your TV is not widescreen) have the black areas above and below the picture like a widescreen movie normally does?

[Imjin]

Yeah you're right, I screwed up the 5.1 surround when I converted to MP3. It stays pure if I leave it in the .AC3 format. Ah the trials of newbieness. When I was using SpruceUp I had the DVD2AVI .AC3 audio track and didn't modify it at all and SpruceUp seemed to take it fine without changing it. I used the settings in the guides here for DVD2AVI to get the dolby digital track settings set correctly.

Back a month or so ago when I made that post, I was still in a very new learning stage and have since figured out what I was messing up on. I ended up using SpruceUp to try to do a 16:9 film and since SpruceUp doesn't do but 4:3, it "skinnied" everything. I try not to use SpruceUp too much anymore for authoring unless I need some quick little menu.

The first successful backup I did of Behind Enemy Lines came out with the wrong aspect since all I had to use at the time to author was SpruceUp, but I need to try the thing you mentioned with IFOEdit if I need to use SpruceUp again. The audio portion seemed to work like the original 5.1 track since my stereo controller deciphered at the same after the backup and re-author with SpruceUp. I've since been using an earlier copy of DVDWise which I seem to have a lot of luck with since it does 4:3 and 16:9 without a hitch... so far.

Since I don't have the $moolah$ to get a high priced authoring package, DVDWise has so far been a godsend for me. I use CCE 2.50 and DVDWise to remux the audio/video files into a VOB, then it'll create the final DVD files.