Creating Pillarboxed 4:3 images for 16:9 DVD Output

Question

Level 1

19 points

Creating Pillarboxed 4:3 images for 16:9 DVD Output

Hi Everyone,

I'm creating a DVD (NTSC) (non broadcast) with 16:9 tracks and 4:3 tracks (not mixed within the same track). My higher priority is on the 16:9 material, and my audience will likely be watching on 16:9 TVs. Still, I don't want the 4:3 material to be stretched. Even designating the 4:3 tracks as such in DVDSP it still stretches on my set top player and household 16:9 TV, so I'm assuming that the best option would be to pillarbox the 4:3 stuff.

I already attempted to create a pillarbox in FCP 6, but the results were pretty bad. My source material is all interlaced video of different codecs, 10-bit uncompressed, ProRess HQ, and DV / DVCPRO. The worst of it was the DV / DVCPRO stuff -- the resolution was degraded, and the video stuttered in places.

The way I attempted to create a pillarbox was to take my 4:3 edited clips and put them into a sequence with the following specs:

1) For DV / DVDPRO footage: Target frame Size 864 x 486, Pixel Aspect Ratio NTSC - CCIR 601, Codec is DV / DVDPRO. My source footage is 720 x 480 NTSC DV, same Pixel Aspect Ratio. Frame rate is 29.97 for source and target. In the Motion tab (under distort) I changed the Aspect ratio to 12.5.

I then used Andy's Letterbox to create a pillarbox matte -- thank you Andy, if you are reading this!

Are my problems caused by the change in vertical resolution (by 6 pixels)? Anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you in advance.

MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on May 10, 2010 10:44 PM

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Answer 1

Andy Mees

Level 6

12,610 points

May 11, 2010 4:35 AM in response to kuishinbo

Best suggestion ... stop what you are doing. Pillarboxing your footage is not a good idea. What happens if your viewers have 4:3 TV's?

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Answer 2

NLEdit

Level 4

1,645 points

May 11, 2010 4:51 AM in response to kuishinbo

You need to check the settings on your DVD player. The player itself will correct the playback of different aspect ratio tracks. You can set this track by track in DVD SP. That's why you see some older distributor labels snap from 4:3 to 16:9 on the main menu

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Answer 3

kuishinbo Author

Level 1

19 points

May 11, 2010 2:21 PM in response to NLEdit

Thank you Andy and NLEdit for your input and for responding so quickly.

I'm practically certain that it will be viewed on a 16:9 TV, so I'm not concerned about that part, and my thought was to essentially force the track to be viewed correctly, if their DVD player doesn't switch automatically like mine doesn't.

Those issues aside, do I understand correctly that there just is no way to make a 16:9 with pillarbox from the 4:3 without suffering a significant loss in quality?

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Answer 4

NLEdit

Level 4

1,645 points

May 11, 2010 2:23 PM in response to kuishinbo

You are correct, and you can't assume if you crop the image and mash it into a smaller 4:3 box that there player won't stretch it out to 16:9. So do it correctly and you'll know that it's right and that it's their player that needs to be adjusted.

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Answer 5

Studio X

Level 7

27,229 points

May 12, 2010 4:49 AM in response to NLEdit

that it's their player that needs to be adjusted.

Or, their TV. What with all the settings HDTVs have to adjust non 16:9 material, and given the technical savvy the average viewer has regarding this stuff, you have no real control over how it will show up.

Do it "correctly". Trying to out think the technologically challenged is a losing proposition.

x

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Answer 6

NLEdit

Level 4

1,645 points

May 12, 2010 6:26 AM in response to Studio X

well put X, that should be your sig line

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Answer 7

kuishinbo Author

Level 1

19 points

May 12, 2010 10:34 AM in response to NLEdit

Studio X -- thank you for adding to the discussion.

I've decided to follow everyone's advice, and keep the original aspect ratios. For what it's worth I will also indicate in the menus "presented in 4:3 [or 16:9] aspect ratio."

For future reference, though, is there ANY software out there that can convert 4:3 to 16:9 with pillarbox without a huge quality loss, or just expensive hardware solutions?

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Answer 8

NLEdit

Level 4

1,645 points

May 12, 2010 5:06 PM in response to kuishinbo

ALL the players do it automatically. There's no need to even consider anything else.

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Answer 9

kuishinbo Author

Level 1

19 points

May 12, 2010 5:19 PM in response to NLEdit

If that's the case, do you have any suggestion as to why 4:3 doesn't get pillarboxed when I watch it on my 16:9 TV? If I watch the DVD in my computer, indeed it gets pillarboxed, and everything is displayed as I programmed it in DVDSP.

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Answer 10

NLEdit

Level 4

1,645 points

May 12, 2010 5:25 PM in response to kuishinbo

either your DVD player hasn't been set correctly. Or the DVD doesn't have the correct 4x3 flag embedded.
You're playing this from a regular DVD player?

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Answer 11

kuishinbo Author

Level 1

19 points

May 12, 2010 5:43 PM in response to NLEdit

Regular DVD player. I tried it on two players, for that matter.

By having "the correct 4x3 flag embedded" do you mean that the Display Mode in the Track Inspector should be set to 4:3, or is there something more?

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Answer 12

NLEdit

Level 4

1,645 points

May 12, 2010 5:45 PM in response to kuishinbo

two things
the track mode
and the initial disc mode.
Is this a disc you made yourself?

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Answer 13

kuishinbo Author

Level 1

19 points

May 12, 2010 6:02 PM in response to NLEdit

Yes, I authored and burned the disc in DVDSP 4.

And I just want to be sure I understand -- by track mode you mean the display mode in the Track Inspector, right?

And what do you mean by initial disc mode?

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Answer 14

NLEdit

Level 4

1,645 points

May 12, 2010 6:19 PM in response to kuishinbo

when you setup DVD SP the first time it asked what your defaults are. But once that's been done you set in three places. The last being the encoding for those times a file is dropped into DVD SP and it does the encoding.

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Answer 15

kuishinbo Author

Level 1

19 points

May 12, 2010 8:20 PM in response to NLEdit

Wow -- with graphics and everything!! Thank you for spending so much time with me on this.

Everything seems to be set correctly, and again, when I watch on my computer's DVD player, it displays correctly everywhere.

The only other thing I can think of which I have not tried is setting up 4:3 menus for the tracks that are 4:3 -- don't know if that's relevant or not. Still, if everything is set up correctly in the places you've indicated, by DVD players should be putting the 4:3 into a pillarbox, right?

By the way, I did my encoding in Compressor. I encoded the 4:3 tracks as 4:3, and the 16:9 as 16:9.

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