Creating & Playing a Widescreen DVD

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Creating & Playing a Widescreen DVD

I ripped a DVD in widescreen format then burned it to a DVD using iDVD 5.

The project works fine in when tested in iDVD. However, when I play the created DVD on my DVD player and TV, it will only play back in 4:3 format. The picture is terribly distorted.

WHat am I doing wrong?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Posted on Jul 31, 2006 5:06 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 1, 2006 12:14 AM in response to davidw

Hi David

My guess is that iDVD 5 don't support HD (16x9) but may be iDVD HD (6).

Yours Bengt W

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Answer 2

Aug 1, 2006 8:57 AM in response to davidw

iDVD 5 supports widescreen, and if you get "Widescreen Preview" when you preview the project in iDVD, you're halfway there.

When you burn the project in iDVD 5, you end up with a DVD that plays just fine in Apple's DVD player, but when you try to play it on a set-top DVD player, the image gets squashed. This is assuming that all the DVD player and TV settings are appropriate. Usually this happens when you have a 4:3 TV connected to a DVD player that knows you have a 4:3 TV and therefore should letterbox the video for you.

The problem is one bit on the disc that Apple sets in an unexpected way. I have a web page that describes the problem and gives three different ways to fix it. The easiest is to create a disc image with iDVD, use Daniel Rogers' perl script to fix it, then burn the fixed image with Disk Utility. Instructions and links are on my page:
http://capital2.capital.edu/admin-staff/dalthoff/widescreen.html

This issue was supposedly fixed in iDVD 6.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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