Anamorphic/Widescreen question

[Mark Suszko]

Rob, I’m not an expert, but after talking to a friend who’s tried to do this recently, we came to the conclusion there is no one perfect way to do this. But I would be very happy indeed to be told I’m wrong about this.

[Bill Dewald]

It’s simple, really.

Export a reference movie of your finished timeline.

Use the preset in compressor for DVD video 16:9 (say best quality 90 mins), and a DVD audio preset.

Drop the resulting files in DVDSP, and burn away.

[Andrew Crosby]

Hey Rob,

Here’s the deal. You need to compress your video using Apple’s Compressor, and I’d suggest to do a test before you go ahead and compress the whole thing. Take like a 2 min section and export it out (make your in and out points on the timeline>export>quicktime movie, and make sure “make self contained” is NOT checked…well, I guess it doesn’t really matter.) Name it test file or something original.

Then take that file and drag and drop it into compressor. Then find the DVD compression called “Fastest Encode 90 min” and duplicate it. You need to then make sure your duplicated setting is highlighted and then click the inspector. Here you can rename it to widescreen 90 min fastest encode or what have you. Then click on the MPEG-2 in your duplicated folder (hope I’m not losing you) and click on your inspector again. There are 6 boxes or tabs at the top of the inspector, go to the second one over named Encoder. Under the Video Format tab there are 4 fields that are grayed out, called Video Format, Frame Rate, Apsect Ratio, and Field Dominence. You want to change the Aspect Ratio to 16:9. Click the cog wheel to the right of Aspect Ratio and you can then change the setting. Hit Save.

And that’s it! Now just drag and drop the new setting folder onto your test clip and start encoding.

Once compressed, bring the encoded file into DVD Studio Pro and it should take care of the rest. If you want to make your DVD menu widescreen as well you can change the project settings in DVD Studio.

If I was at all confusing let me know and I can try to elaborate. Let me know how you make out.

————–
Andrew Crosby
Video Editor

“Insert something witty here”

[Rob Taylor]

Thanks for the response and I should have clarified a couple other things before you went to the trouble of answering. I am using FCE (so no Compressor) and then would likely burn it in iDVD or Toast Titanium 9 (will likely use iDVD).

What I have been told to do is… once done editting open a new project in 4:3 (the one I chose from the presets is – DV NTSC 48khz) and then copy the timeline from the 16:9 project into the 4:3 one. When I do this all is well …the 16:9 footage is letterboxed (transparent bars above and below in the canvas and aspect looks correct) HOWEVER, when I export QT movie the .mov file shows letterboxed (which again is expected) BUT the video looks a bit squatty (compressed from top to bottom or maybe stretched horzontally). Is that going to correct itself once I burn the dvd in 16:9? What am I missing?

Thanks for your input