some format weirdness

[lucindrea]

ok i have done some searching and it havent been able to find anyone with the same type of problem i seem to have...
i have a reply dvr ... i record a movie on digatial cable that is letterboxed ... the recorder recorded it as 4:3 like the broadcast was done ... now i move the mpeg off the recorder onto my system .. because the movie is 5G i need to re-encode it , ... now i used the default dvd template ( ntsc ) in tmpgenc and inported the movie into maestro .. told maestro the movie was 16:9 ...
it looks great when played on the computer .. BUT when played on the TV i get a letterboxed movie with a letterboxed movie inside that ( my black levels wer off so i could see the second set of bars inside the bars ) ..

now i know i screwed up somthing somewhere but i'm not 100% shore where...
should i use the clip fram in tmpgenc to clip down to the acctual movie? if so what do i tell it the source and dest ratio should be? source 4:3 and dest 4:3 or 16:9? and do i use 16:9 or 4:3 in maestro?

if my dvdplayer would read dvd-rw's this would not be a post here as i would try differnt methods to get it working .. as is my only other option is to create 6 or 7 clips all encoded differntly and burn them onto ( an expencive ) dvd-r... i may end up doing this , ut i was hopeing someone here would have some advice first.

[REECYCUP]

im not sure but if u got it from tv its 4:3
i think letterboxed just means they added the black bars
alot of dvd's are that way too

[ulfschack]

Your misstake was in authoring as 16:9. You should do it 4:3. That way the viewable area (the area inside the captured black bars) will have AR 16:9.

I'm uncertain if it matters a great deal to set the AR to 4:3 in TmpgEnc, though. Or if it's overridden by DVDMaestro anyways. You say "default settings" ... I don't know what they are.

Cheers

[lucindrea]

ok i figured it out .. the rest of this is just information others may want.

ok i made the aspect ration dvd ... 16 differnt ways to do it so 16 tracks .... here is what i found out
out of the 16 their wer only 4 combos that worked
4:3/4:3/4:3/Y
4:3/4:3/16:9/y
4:3/16:9/16:9/y
16:9/16:9/16:9/y

format = x:x/y:y/z:z/YN where x:x = format selected in advanced tab in tmpgeng , y:y = format selected in video tab of tmpgenc , z:z format used in maestro , YN = did i or didnt i clip the orginal black bars in tmpgenc

so it seems as long as i go 4:3 -> anything AND i clip the orginal black bars it's ok ( note 4:3/16:9/4:3 does not work )... 4:3/4:3/4:3/y is the smallest mpeg result and their seems to be no quality differnace between the formats , at least none that i could tell.


note: .. i could make an image of the 560 MB dvd if anyone is intrested in testing this on your home player ( i forgot to make menu connections so you need to manualy type the title #'s on the remote )