I have a film on my hard drive and when l view the thumbnail of it, the black band displayed across it gives me an indication of what it will look like on the tv. And yes, when burnt to dvd disk and played back on the tv (pal europe), it is like looking through a letterbox Details of the file are Aspect Ratio - 2.35 (26:11) and Video Stream Count - mpeg4 640x272 [PAR 1:1 DAR 40:17] - Which l have got to admit mean nothing to me whatsover! Film dimensions (in this case 640x272) always confuses me as they all seem to be different sizes. To me, a reasonable playback size seems to be 624x352. At the moment l'm using ConvertX and I know that you can change the menu settings before conversion starts. Have read the manual but the terminology shown is a bit confusing for me. So my question is, can l change the films parameters from 640x272 to something more like 624x352, and if so, what needs changing in the ConvertX program menus? Is there another program that l should be using instead or can nothing be done at all? Thanks
The resolution of a DVD movie (once it's on the disk) has to be either 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL). The aspect ratio of a DVD movie (once it's on the disk) has to be 4:3 or 16:9. Your 2.35:1 will be fitted inside a 16:9 letterbox and it's there so that you can see all the detail as it was originally shot. The only way you can fill the whole TV screen is to distort the aspect ratio or chop the sides off the movie before ConvertX authors it or zoom/fill it on the TV (which distorts/chops the sides off too).
Thanks attar, I'm not up with all the terminology used in the ConvertX manual but your post made it a lot easier for me to understand. I now grasp the basic principles. Thanks again.
