aaaaggghhh!!!! Stop cropping my DVD!!! Urgent help please!*

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aaaaggghhh!!!! Stop cropping my DVD!!! Urgent help please!*

Hi, would really really appreciate some help with this one.

So, i shot my footage on an HD camera and have worked and edited the film in Final Cut Pro X (in 1280 x 720). It looks great, really happy with it!

Now i need to put this onto DVD (just a normal DVD - not Blue Ray). I have Compressor 4.

When i burn the DVD (MPEG-2) and play it on my mac, the video plays with the correct aspect ratio etc. When I then play the exact same DVD on other DVD players, it crops the image quite a bit. First of all, why is this? The Tv's I am playing it on are also HD but the DVD players are not. Secondly, what settings do I eed to use to create a DVD that will show the correct video aspects on normal DVD players.

I have burned numerous DVDs with various settings, looking all over the net for advice as well. Using diffrent padding, aspect ratios etc and nothing seems to work. When i reduce the image size, the video quality also seems to get really poor.

This video will potentially be seen by thousands of people in my work organisation and they need the disk by Friday. This has to look good!

Please help!

Many thanks

Matt

Posted on Nov 19, 2013 12:53 PM

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Answer 1

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Nov 19, 2013 2:39 PM in response to mrMRKelly

You shouldn't need to specify anything in Geometry – no cropping or padding. Compressor should see your movie as 16:9 and automatically down convert to 720x480, and with ,84 pixel shape so it will display correctly on an HD TV.

If it is correct on the Mac, I would guess thr problem is with menu settings in the DVD player and/or TV. So I'd check their manuals.

Good luck.

Russ

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Answer 2

mrMRKelly Author

Level 1

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Nov 20, 2013 1:34 AM in response to Russ H

Cheers Russ, but is there a way to ensure that the frame/aspect ratio is the same whether its on an HD TV or not?

Matt

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Answer 3

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Nov 20, 2013 10:08 AM in response to mrMRKelly

If things work the way they are supposed to work in the chain from encoding to player to TV, the DVD should display full screen, 16X9 on an HD TV and letterboxed on an SD 4X3 set.

For whatever reason, the chain seems to be broken with the equipment you are using. Only thing I can suggest is test the electronics gear and see what display adjustments can be made in cases where the image is not being displayed correctly.

Or I suppose you could make two versions – a version for widescreen and a version for SD, That could be done in FCP by dropping the 16X9 version into a 4:3 project. You would wind up with letterboxed 4:3.

Russ

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