Hello all. I really have looked through the newbie forum threads and how to guides but didn't see this question/answer. I apologize if it is a double post. I have the following DVD burner: I have a widescreen (16:9) Sony HDTV. I have a Comcast cable box with DVR. I am trying to burn DVDs of content I recorded in HD, 16:9 on the Comcast DVR (i.e. TV shows). Now, I believe I've read enough to know that I can't burn HD onto the DVDs, or at least I can't with this Sony DVD burner. What I'm trying to figure out is if I can't record the 16:9 (full screen) aspect ratio from the DVR onto the DVD (regardless of HD). The burner only has 2 options for video input: composite or S-video. I am using S-video to go from my DVR to the DVD burner. In the DVD Burner menu, I select my TV Type to be 16:9. When I watch content from the DVR on my TV, it fills the entire screen, as it should. When I view the content from the DVR played through the DVD burner (i.e. while the DVD is burning), the picture fills most of the screen, except for two black bars above and below the picture, though they are not equal in height (as you see in a Letterbox movie). The top bar is a bit shorter than the bottom bar. There are no black bars on the sides of the screen while I'm watching the content through the burner and burning the DVD. Once I burn the DVD and replay it on my TV or computer monitor (also a 16:9 widescreen), not only do the top and bottom black bars show up, but there are also bars on the left and right (like you'd see when watching a 4:3 show on a widescreen TV). So the picture is framed inside black bars all around it! In the DVD Burner troubleshooting, it states that if the picture doesn't filll the screen, even though the aspect ratio is set up correctly in the 'TV Type', the cause is that "the aspect ratio of the disk is fixed on your DVD". Are there different types of blank DVDs that have aspect ratios pre-set? I have Memorex DVD+RW, but they don't say anything on the package as far as 4:3 aspect ratios or 16:9 aspect ratios. I tried calling Sony, but they're crap. Anyone have any experience/help?
I assume your PC has a DVD player/burner. If you play the recorded movie, does it look ok as it does on TV? On the DVD, is there a 'VIDEO_TS' folder? If there is, drag the file 'VTS_01_1.VOB' onto 'MediaInfo' and look for the aspect ratio listing. It expect it to be 4:3 or 16:9 http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_software/mp3_tools/mediainfo.cfm
Thanks for the response! When I watch the recorded DVD on my PC's DVD player, it looks the same as it does when I play the DVD on my TV's DVD player after recording it... i.e. it also shows the same black bar frames (top, bottom, sides), so I don't think it's something on my TV or PC settings. There is a 'VIDEO_TS' folder on the DVD, but it doesn't contain a file called 'VTS_01_1.VOB'. It does have a file named 'VIDEO_TS.IFO' and a file named 'VTS_01_0.IFO'. When I open either of these in MediaInfo, it doesn't show the 16:9 from your screen capture. It shows 4:3, so apparently it's getting burned in 4:3 format, but I have no idea how, since my 'TV Type' on the DVD burner. I'm still stumped.
There has to be .VOB file(s) - else there's no movie. I have a Panasonic DVD Recorder and it flags the content as 4:3 - yet playback on the TV is widescreen (the same as the original over the air program). On the PC, the media player plays it back as 4:3 - unless I tell it to display it as 16:9 - then it looks the same as the original. If I want to burn a new DVD with the correct AR, I first rip the contents to the HDD. There are two ways to change the AR: One is to use a program called 'DVDPatcher' and let it re-write the AR on each .VOB file - then burn the VIDEO_TS folder to disk using ImgBurn. The other method is to run VOBtoMPG to create one large mpeg file. Load that file into DVD Flick and specify that I want to copy a DVD compliant MPEG-2 file and also that I want a 16:9 movie. Since neither method involves recoding, the process is fast.
