I have a bunch of copied movies. I just got a new dvd player and now almost every movie that i have copied has a squished picture, the faces and other stuff in the picture are skinnier then they should be. I have changed the aspect ratio to all three different modes in the dvd player, and the problem still remains (and my tv doesnt have an option to change the ratio), do you think its a faulty dvd player, its a sony 315, my old one was an apex-600, and it worked perfect. Does anyone have any ideas, or can you tell me the name of a new dvd player that doesnt do this.

Are u using a different input for the player then you were using before? Also maybe when u change the aspect ratio you should completely turn the player off and turn it back on?

Last thing I can think of is to take the DVD's over to a friends house and see how they look. It sounds like its probably your DVD player though.

In the setup menu for the DVD player, select the type of TV (4:3) or (16:9) you are actually watching on.

I believe he said he changed that.

oopsieee! :)

i tried it on two friends dvd players.....it worked on one and not on another, and i tried all ratio settings, this seems strange to me why it would work on some and not others, does anyone know why? The new dvd player didnt work with it, and a very old one did (like one of the first). is there some new spec. im not aware of?

what DVD players did your friend have, which did it work on, and which didn't it?

one friend had an old pioneer, mine was an early apex....it worked on these two...however, it didnt work on a new sony i bought and a new mintek my friend just picked up. I also have noticed some of the backups look strange on my computer, i followed the dvd2dvdr guide, do you think i may have done something wrong?

do you think it could possibly be my tv, i have an hdtv and someone suggested that that could be the problem.

It has nothing to do with your TV. As you said, they even look funny on the computer.

Last night I did my first DVD Backup that I had to re-encode with. It was Pleasantville and it was a 16x9 movie. When I was done, watching it on the computer it played as a squished 4x3.

When I put it in my DVD player (I do have a HDTV Widescreen TV) it played as a 4x3 squished movie. However, once I changed the aspect ratio of my DVD player from 16x9 Auto to 16x9 Normal, it stretched it back out and it looked perfect.

Different DVD players will handle that differently. So now the question is.. how do we fix this so that when we re-encode the movie it is not squished down into a 4x3.

When that happens to me, I just push ZOOM on the dvd player & presto, full screen :-)

This only happens on the movies that i used the dvd2dvdr method on...w/ smart ripper, and spruce, and prassi....is there some setting that i am missing in one of these programs, that outputs the movie this way? thanks

Are you using IFOEdit to fix the aspect ratio of your 16:9 movies after authoring with Spruceup? Spruce defaults to 4:3 and must be manually edited.

thank you....this was the problem...does anyone know of any hardware that can repair the problem that i can connect to my tv (or another dvd player like the one i had (apex ad600 - this one seemed to work perfect for me)).....i have copied over a 100 movies and dont want to do it again. thanks

Ouch!
Not off hand. I know my, and some others with digital tv's can change the aspect ratio of the tv, but I don't know if there is any kind of addon hardware out there ..........
Good Luck.

thick24,

Were u using the Widescreen method on my guide???? The only way you are going to get it to play properly is with a widescreen TV.

When it happened to me I found out it was the format of the capture. I captured too small. Some players played full screen, others squeezed.

rishardc - do you have any ideas for me? I am using your IfoEdit Guide
If I have to re-encode my movie, they come out all wrong in the aspect area

Basics: I have a widescreen TV and a Normal TV that I test these on

If I do a 16x9 movie with the settings that you state in your guide, the movie comes out all squished in 4x3 format. I can watch it on my Widescreen TV ok if I change it to 16x9 Normal mode (instead of Auto). That plays fine (since it stretches it back out) but it still looks bad on my normal TV.

So I thought that maybe your settings for Pulldown were incorrect and I changed it to 16x9 instead of 1:1 and that seemed to fix it. It comes out widescreen and looks ok on my Normal TV. However, while it looks like it also worked on my 16x9 TV, I found out that it is actually cutting out part of the movie all around it. Almost like the movie is expanded too far and I lose a "border" all around the movie (I tested it by switching back and forth between widescreen and normal mode, you can see the parts that are missing in widescreen)

Any ideas? I do not want to do anymore movies until I can figure this out

Thanks

Btw, someone said something about checking IfoEdit to make sure it is in 16x9 mode. How do I do that when I am doing the authoring?

You have to load the IFO for the movie (example: VTS_01_1.IFO) into IFOEdit, in the upper window click on VTSI_MAT in the upper section, and scroll down to [00000200] in the lower section and double click that line. In the dialog that comes up, tick the 16:9 bullet, and check the automatic letterbox option. Click save, and save the IFO, and when it askes about the BUP say yes also.

REMEMBER... Not all widescreen movies are formatted widescreen. Some are fullscreen (4:3) with black bars added. Either preview the original DVD without going into full screen, so you can see the shape of the window, or look at the original IFO for the movie with IFOEdit.

If you are encoding with CCE, you should see the aspect ratio in DVD2AVI when you save the project anyway, in the information window, that pops up on the right as you save the project.

can anyone who made the same mistake i did (record a movie widescreen, but have a 4x3 tv), tell me the name of a dvd player which fixed the problem. For me it was the apex-600. However, it no longer works, and i cant seem to find them anywhere. Thanks

any other ideas? The only one i can think of is to buy a widescreen tv, but i dont have that kind of money.

you can reburn the dvd's with with proper aspect ratio. That would be cheaper.

is there any new dvd players or devices out that will transform the aspect ratio?