[Ryan Walker]

Blu-ray player with HDMI cable. I am working with an older widescreen TV. Maybe it’s the settings on the TV. I will try a few other sources.

[Ryan Walker]

Huh, I followed this and still ended up with a letterbox. Am I missing something?

[Ryan Walker]

Yep, I never transcode in Encore. Fully aware of the pitfalls there. Appreciate the detailed advice, great stuff Jeff.

[Ryan Walker]

Jeff,
Thanks for the solid easy to follow info. Out of curiosity what is the benefit of using Premiere over Adobe Encoder? Seems like it would be easier to pop them in Encoder and roll. There must be a reason so many people recommend Premiere.

Finding Scale to Fill in Encoder is like an Easter egg hunt. I’m blow away at how hard it was to find. Much easier to see in Premiere.

[Ryan Walker]

Dave, Tero and Walter I thank you much for the quick responses and help.

[Ryan Walker]

Wasn’t so worried about 4:3 screens as they are hard to come by. But oddly enough I am getting a litterbox on some widescreen HD TVs and even Windows Media Player when the 16:9 AE comp DVD is used. Sounds like you guys were right, a 4:3 DVD is the best way to go. I simply have to suck up the potential stretch issue.

[Ryan Walker]

I do realize that I can’t control another viewers TV. This project is geared to the 60 year old and up crowd who probably won’t be well versed in aspect ratio. The man who directed this is in his 80’s and doesn’t like the quality when the video stretches. I agree, it looks much worse. Therefore I am thinking my best bet is to create a 16:9 version so when the average viewer plays it on a wide screen TV, quality isn’t lost in potential default stretching. In general testing on HD TV’s, stretching seems to be the rule, not the exception. The 16:9 version will have black bars on the side, but it won’t lose quality based on a TV manufactures decision to default stretch a 4:3 DVD.

My thought was to create an AE NTSC DV Widescreen comp and scale the video accordingly. Am I off in my thinking?

[Ryan Walker]

Create an NTSC DV comp, put your content in it, and scale it to fit the height of the comp. The keyboard shortcut is to select the layer and press Claw+G. (Claw is my goofy shorthand for Ctrl+Alt+Shift on a PC and Cmd+Opt+Shift on a Mac.)

I dropped my video in a AE 720×480 NTSC DV comp and “Claw+G” it. I then took the comp converted it to MPEG2, then drug it into Encore. Once in Encore the program defaulted to a 4:3, now way to switch to a 16:9. Burned the DVD and both TV’s I tried it in stretched the video to fill the screen. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t maintain the same 4:3 look as it does in the original file.

What if I created a NTSC DV Wde screen comp and Claw G that?

[Ryan Walker]

Wouldn’t I end up with a 4:3 DVD based on what your recommended? My concern with a 4:3 DVD is most newer TV’s will auto stretch it to fit a wide screen. My target audience is an older crowd who won’t have a clue about fixing that. Based on what you’ve written, my best bet to achieve a 16:9 with a 4:3 square in the middle is to create a DV Widescreeen comp and apply the same logic. That sound right?

[Ryan Walker]

Thanks for the info Walter.

I do realize that I don’t need square pixels for this project because it’s for a DVD, however I was curious how that would be achieved if you wouldn’t mind a quick explanation.