[Juan Escajadillo]

I see.

I discovered something about rendering to AVI, not matter what codecs I’m using.

Doing some research, I realized that AVI doesn’t have a flag to obtain the pixel aspect ratio from a DVD or, in this case, an MPEG2 video, as these they have it that gives the capability to change that AR on the same size (720×480)! I say PAR because that’s what appears in WMP. To obtain this on AVI, I have to actually resize the video. I prefer reducing it because making it bigger would see everything distorted.

However, I’ll keep in mind the tips you told me for making videos to DVD. One last question: I’m doing a custom template 704×396. (it gives me 16:9, I calculated it) with a PAR of 1. If I want to include, let’s say, a 480p video (640×480), what is the PAR I would assign to that video? It’s to make the video appear correctly on screen, with the two lateral black bars.

Greetings.

[Juan Escajadillo]

I’m using the NTSC DV Widescreen template. And I’m using Windows Media Player, since that’s the only player I have to determine the aspect ratio. Any alternatives are welcome. I also have Media Player Classic and VLC, but the don’t give me the AR. I tried on all the players and the look is the same no matter what (I mean 3:2 AR). That’ doesn’t happen with the source MPEG2 videos I mentioned before, it shows their AR right (16:9).

What I need in all the cases, no matter if it’s AVI or MPEG2, is my videos showing the widescreen AR (16:9) right.

Sorry if I haven’t told you this before.

I wish I could send you the videos to show you an example of what happening to me.

Greetings.

[Juan Escajadillo]

Hi, again.

Well, my plan is placing it to the internet. I also want to put it on DVD, but it doesn’t let me record with 5.1 surround sound, I suppose I have to render both things separately.

Today I tried to render the video in AVI with the default settings of the NTSC template. I realized one thing: it doesn’t let me record the 5.1 surrond sound together. Guess I have to render it apart.

The result were unfortunately the same! What’s wrong with avi since it’s not getting 16:9?

Right now I’m going to try on MPEG2. I’ll write you later.

[Juan Escajadillo]

Yes, and I forgot to mention, I was rendering to AVI (with XviD). I’m not making all this, John (BTW, your name is the same as mine, just in English). Because that was the result after RENDERING my video. It doesn’t show 16:9 in the properties when played in WMP, it SHOWS 3:2 instead. Believe me, I’m serious. What’s going wrong if I’m just doing it right? Are the codecs I’m using for compression?

Please give me a answer because I’m just going nuts!

BTW, I realized the source videos (in MPEG2) use DAR, not PAR, and it shows on the properties. I know, I know. But if those videos are in 720×480, it should have a 3:2 aspect ratio. No, they have 16:9 aspect ratio, which makes me think it’s a DAR, and that comes from the camcorder. Just tell me how to achieve that DAR. What are your tricks, if there any? If the problem is the XviD codec, should I try another or doesn’t it matter?

Greetings.

[Juan Escajadillo]

I’m using the “NTSC DV Widescreen (720×480, 29,97fps)” template. The PAR is 1.2121. That the one I’m having the 3:2 aspect ratio problem. Do I have to modify that to 1.0000?

And BTW, I’m using Vegas Pro v8.0b. Hope you find it useful.

I have a trick to make it look widescreen, but two things:

1. That means reducing the size to match the 16:9 aspect ratio. And…
2. That also means ignoring the source video’s aspect ratio. Those come from a Handycam HDD camcorder and records at 720×480 16:9 video with 5.1 surround sound.

Hope that info comes in handy to figure out my problem, John, since I want to make a DVD-quality video.