[Chris Reason]

I know I would never personally use Auto aspect ratio but I cannon rely on my clients to do the same and expect them to have the intelligence to figure it out for the perfect viewing conditions. The easy answer I guess would be for me not to have black bars and not to crop the image but I loose that feel i’m going for which I want to avoid.

[Chris Reason]

This happens with me sometimes.
I use a sony deck, my work around is turn off Video playback Out put by selecting NONE in the drop bar and also un-tick mirror on desktop.

Enable different Output for Edit to Tape/ Print to Video and select what is appropriate for you you in Video & Audio.

Let me know if that works for you 🙂

[Chris Reason]

Thanks for the response Michael.
When the Tv / DVD is set to manually view 16:9 ratio it works fine and the black bars show which is what I want. However as soon as the settings are changed to auto detect The TV removes the black bar thus stretching the image which is not what I want.

The thing is when the client is viewing the work I don’t know if their TV is set to the correct 16:9 aspect ration or is set to Auto detect. If the clients Tv is set to 16:9 then I they will get the desired effect when they can see the cropped image (Black Bars).

If the TV is on auto detect it will try and take the black bars out which is not what I want. As in post I have cropped the footage by 10% on top and 10% bottom a total of 20% so I have visible black bars for a kind of 2:1 ration look to it. What I am finding when a TV is on auto detect it takes the intended black bars away leaving an over of image quality that is reduced and stretched by 20%.

I was thinking of very thin white bars or L shapes in each corner of the screen in hope that if a TV is set on Auto detect it will notice them and thus keeping the black bars present without any stretch. But of course if that way works then perhaps i’m running the risk of visible whites lines. Thought perhaps somebody might be aware of the problem and know a work around.