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sigamy · Jan 14, 2005, 11:20 AM

Does anyone have a clear understanding of what iDVD 5 is going to give us when dealing with 16:9 standard def (not HDV)?

I have a Panasonic GS400 3CCD cam that provides for "true" 16:9 video. The quality is amazing. iDVD 4 will not set the 16:9 flag correctly so my video appears stretched on the final DVD.

Will iDVD 5 correct this problem? Will it set the 16:9 flag correctly so that my 16:9 footage will remain 16:9. I believe it will but people on other forums don't seem to agree.

Look at the image of the large screen TV with the Aloha Dreams DVD on this page. To me that looks like even the menus are 16:9, which is awesome.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/idvd/explore.html

Uncle Skeleton · Jan 14, 2005, 04:40 PM

I don't know what iDVD may or may not do automatically, but you can set the 16:9 bit (actually it's half a byte) manually. You wait for iDVD to completely finish encoding everything, go into the dvdproj package, find the mpeg streams, edit them with HexEdit thusly:
http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/EditMpegHeaderIFO.html
so they're 16:9 instead of 4:3

barang · Jan 14, 2005, 08:35 PM

Quick question that's off the point: What's the resolution of SD 16:9 video? I assume that it's still 480 vertical lines, but what's the horizontal rez?

Spoffo · Jan 15, 2005, 05:28 PM

Another app for re-setting the aspect ratio flag before burnng your finished MPEG is MyDVDEdit (donationware) <http://www.editorsbin.com/mydvdedit/>

It has a very nice interface that makes it all quite clear for those of us who don't want to get too deep into MPEG streams & such.

dlefebvre · Jan 15, 2005, 07:42 PM

Originally posted by barang:
Quick question that's off the point: What's the resolution of SD 16:9 video? I assume that it's still 480 vertical lines, but what's the horizontal rez?

It depends. It's 852x480 if you use a square pixel aspect ratio. Or it's 720x480 (same as 4:3) if you use a 1.2 to 1 pixel aspect ratio, as oposed to the 0.9 to 1 pixel aspect ratio of 4:3 standard def video. This is refered to as anamorphic 16:9.

ratter · Jan 20, 2005, 07:15 PM

Is it possible, and if so could somebody please explain how, to set this 16:9 flag *before* burning the iDVD project to disk?

Uncle Skeleton · Jan 20, 2005, 08:00 PM

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
You wait for iDVD to completely finish encoding everything, go into the dvdproj package, find the mpeg streams, edit them with HexEdit thusly:
http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/EditMpegHeaderIFO.html
so they're 16:9 instead of 4:3

ratter · Jan 20, 2005, 08:07 PM

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:

I caught that....what I meant was, how do you get iDVD to encode the video (so that you can then go edit the file) without burning the disk? Just saving the project doesn't seem to do anything substantial....

Sorry, this is probably beyond basic...

Uncle Skeleton · Jan 21, 2005, 11:48 AM

just wait a long time. you can see the status of "asset encoding" somewhere in the funny drawer on the left side

Mithras · Jan 22, 2005, 09:40 AM

You can also use the iDVD disk image hack if you're sticking with iDVD 4.

ratter · Jan 22, 2005, 01:51 PM

I guess it's a non-issue, as I'll be picking up iDVD5 as soon as the snow lets up, but the problem I had was that after I had created the project and the assets had encoded, when I would go edit the file with hexedit to change the aspect ratio, then go back into iDVD, it would re-encode the assets and I'd end up with 4:3 again. Tried this twice before giving up....