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What settings should h.264 have for widescreen and other problems
Hey guys,
I have a wedding I shot, got it edited down and exported it in MPEG2 to burn directly to DVD.
I wanted to burn the MPEG2 file using iDVD because I really like their DVD menus. However, MPEG2 is not supported unless you buy the MPEG2 codec from Apple, which I did but it does not have any sound…go figure.
So anyways, I went back to the project and exported the video into h.264 and burn it that way. However, the end product makes the video into an almost 4:3 image, even though I told it to do the Pixel Aspect Ratio in 16:9. The source video was an HDV video filmed in 1440×1080 and I want to export it to 720×480 (DVD resolution, should I just keep it at 1440×1080 and let it downconvert when its in iDVD?).
So the main question is, what settings do I need h.264 to maintain a 16:9 image?
Please feel free to chime in on any of the other problems I mentioned.
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5 Replies
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If you are exporting for iDVD, H.264 isn’t a good candidate.
If you want to see a quality DVD, use Quicktime animation instead.
Regarding the sizing issue, (and that goes for H.264 if you are going or the web as well) I usually export square pixels at a resolution of 864×480.
Vince Becquiot
Director | EditorKaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
If you are producing a video-DVD, the ONLY choice for video compression is MPEG2*. If you are producing widescreen, the image will still be 720×480 (again, the only choice for video-DVD), but with a widescreen (1.2 pixel aspect) flag set, so playback hardware will display as 16:9.
Test through the entire chain; i.e., play back your finished DVD on a DVD set-top player.
Hope it helps,
Jeff -
Yeah I knew that DVD was MPEG-2.
The reason I was asking this question was because I wanted to use iDVD to create the DVD menus. However, Apple doesn’t have native support for MPEG-2 (which is dumb since it convert its to MPEG-2 in the end product) so I paid $20 for the MPEG-2 codec which allowed the video to work…but the sound was not existent. So I rendered it in QuickTime animation at 865×480 with a PAR of 1.0 and it worked out fine.
I really wish Apple would get better MPEG-2 support. It just seems backwards that they want you to use their program (quicktime) instead of MPEG-2 which it converts to anyways. Really frusterating stuff.
While I’m on the topic, is there a way to have professional menus like in iDVD with Encore or DVD Studio Pro? I’m assuming you can, I just need to learn some tutorials. iDVD is great because its easy and looks very professional. But at the same time its ease doesn’t give you many advanced options when customizing a DVD.
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Encore has a vast amount of templates, just like iDVD. Encore also has the advantage that it allows you to import Photoshop and AE templates for easy custom animation and motion menus.
On the down side for Encore, I think iDVD is just a bit more solid.
At least until CS4, Encore would sometimes come up with weird errors with custom menus.Vince Becquiot
Director | EditorKaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
OK, sorry. Good question, dumb answer.
I probably would have sent a 720×480 animation or PNG QuickTime to iDVD, to avoid having to scale it in the authoring proggy, but your approach is certainly valid.-jeff
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