4:3 aspect video gets cut away

[DUR0N]

First of all, I don't know if this is the correct forum, but I'm guessing that something goes wrong in the authoring step, so i'm placing it here.

Anyway, here goes: I'm trying to put multiple episodes of a serie on a DVD. They come in 25fps 432x324 (4:3) and since i'm living in Europe, a PAL conversion was the easiest.
First, I used vdub to stripp the audio out of the container, resize it to 720x540 (as much as possible to get a 720x576 file, but while maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio), add some borders (18px bottom and 18px top) to make it 720x576 and some extra filters to clean the picture. I encoded it in xvid 1pass 100% quality which gives me a file of 1gb, but it's the right file to encode with CCE. So, endcoded it with CCE, 4:3 aspect ratio setting and I got the mpv files in the right size and framerate for DVD-maestro. When I imported those, Maestro asked me to change the default setting to PAL, which is correct imo. All streams were set to 4:3 in DVDmaestro, menu was made and I compiled it.

Now, when I put the disc in my DVD player, It cuts of video on all sides. It doesn't matter if I put my DVD and/or my DVD player in 4:3 or 16:9(LB/P&C), it always cuts of some information. I know The video is still there, because when I use PowerDVD in my PC, it works flawlessly.

Does anyone know what I did wrong? I could really use some pointers after about a week of searching and 25 broken DVD-R's.

[The Geek]

You did nothing wrong, you just need to know that CRT TVs have an overscan area. They always cut a bit from the edges off.

Look at the preview window in DVD Maestro. See the thin frame inside ? That indicates the overscan. Whatever is beyond that border, won't be visible on the TV.
PCs do not use overscan, therefore you see the whole image on your monitor.

resize it to 720x540 (as much as possible to get a 720x576 file, but while maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio)

Then you understood it wrong. The pixels on the TV are no square pixels, they are a bit wider than high. Though the 720x576 is not 4:3 with square pixels, it will be shown as 4:3 on the TV (video gets stretched a bit). You can even use 352x576, and it's still 4:3.
So, your 720x540 + black borders video will be displayed a bit wider than 4:3 on the TV.

The Geek

[DUR0N]

So the best thing to do is to resize it to something like 680x524 and add black borders to make it an dvdmaestro-acceptable file (720x576)?
Damn, another six days of encoding wasted.

Thank you very much for your hints! :)

[The Geek]

Well, the normal way is to resize the video to 720x576 and then author it. Really, don't worry about the overscan.
Everything you see on TV has some video in the overscan area that you don't see.

But if you really want the whole video to be visible, then resize it to something like 623x519 (that's the resolution of the safe area in Scenarist. However, TVs can display more than that. The size of the overscan varies a bit from TV to TV), then add black borders to get a video of 768x576 (which is 4:3 with square pixels), and encode it as 720x576 4:3.

Depending of the actual overscan of a particular TV, you might see the black borders on some TVs.
Also keep in mind that LCD TVs have no overscan. Really, I wouldn't worry about it.

The Geek