timzett

so...? Nothing on that anymore...?

Nope, not really ;-) The full width of the image is not the issue but the full height. With the DVD, VP horizontally squeezes a widescreen image, so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame - namely anamorphic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen However, that doesn't work with 'Computer / Data' saving feature, because there the pixels are not made wider, as they are made with anamorphic procedure though. Another example: Let's say you have an input footage with 19:9 aspect ratio, whatever resolution - doesn't really matter. Further assume that the entire image is a completely blue sky, no clouds, just one blue tone over the entire 16:9 image. So when you create your PAL DVD using the settings described in my previous step 1, the result will be an MPEG2 file (VOB), with anamorphic 720x576 16:9 video frame, means 720x576 equals 100% blue-sky-pixels in the resulting video. However, when you create your MPEG2 file using the file saving option described in my previous step 2, the result will be an MPEG2 file, with 720x576 but always 4:3 a/r and thus unfortunately non-anamorphic video frame, means 720x576 minus the black-bar-pixels from the top and bottom, resulting from shrinking the 16:9 input footage into the 4:3 frame, which means considerable loss of effective vertical resolution: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/anamorphic185demo.html In this respect, also note that, though the 1024 x 576 Widescreen TV setting you proposed is 16:9 a/r, it's important to know that this is not supported for DVD video files, because that resolution is not in the DVD standard and thus DVD players cannot play that resolution (some BluRay players might be able to, maybe). And so the outcome is that you cannot use VP together with 3rd party DVD menu/layout creation software, like free DVDStyler, to create 16:9 anamorphic HQ DVDs, at least not without the need of re-rendering the previously created MPEG2 files. To fix that issue in the VP binaries I see the following options: 1) The likely easier one: Provide a third option on 'Save Video - Disc' dialogue, like 'Save as video file'. A choice option between .vob and .mpg format would be the cream on the pie. 2) Provide an additional option on 'Save Video - Computer / Data' dialogue, like 'Save as anamorphic 16:9 video file' or a choice to distinguish between native 4:3 (letterboxed) or 16:9 (anamorphic) output, in the latter case using the same export parameters than on 'Disc'. ...guess now I nailed it :-) Regards, Tim

Hi Nat, first of all thanks for your prompt reply. Also note that it was my bad saying "amorphous". What I actually meant was "anamorphic widescreen" - hope that helps. Let me explain a bit more in detail what I mean: I have 1920x1080 Full HD (16:9 as you know) as the input footage. So I do my cuts and FX stuff etc. and then I will export it with one of the Save Movie options, with the goal to get a standard DVD PAL anamorphic widescreen video file. Now here it becomes interesting. Scenario 1: When I use the 'Disc' saving feature, create a DVD with it (on VP PAL 16:9 export setting) and analyze the resulting VOB afterwards, e.g. with MediaInfo, it tells me: 16:9 aspect ratio and 720x576 pixels resolution. When I watch this VOB with VLC, it confirms I got a native DVD conform anamorphic widescreen video: Full 16:9 display aspect ratio and full 720x576 DVD resolution (no cropping and/or image stretching). => so everything OK here, maximum DVD pixels, thumbs up :-) Scenario 2: However, when I take exactly the same input footage as before but save it using 'Computer / Data' saving feature instead, first of all it's missing the 'Video Aspect Ratio' dialogue, so I cannot clearly define 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio based on my TV standard (PAL or NTSC). Now when I use the same pixel dimensions as I got before (because I still/again want to produce a full resolution 16:9 PAL DVD conform anamorphic widescreen MPEG2), namely Custom 720x576, the saved video will always be a native 4:3 aspect ratio frame with the given 720x576 pixels, but with the original 16:9 aspect ratio "shrinked" into the 4:3 frame, so you have black bars at the top and the bottom of the video where pixels might be instead, thus having less effective video pixels than in the first scenario. So that is exactly what you described in the last section of your previous post, and you are absolutely right saying that this is letterboxing. However, the remaining question is, why does it perform letterboxing here while it is capable of creating anamorphic widescreen (full 720x576 native 16:9 video) with the Disc saving option? I hope this explanation will help you understanding what the actual issue is: Loss of pixels in scenario 2, because the image is still "in shape" but because of the fixed 4:3 frame, effectively smaller. Kind regards, Tim

Hello guys, I was playing with VideoPad recently and found the following things the software still seems lacking: 1) 5.1 sound support: How about input files with that audio format? They always seem to be converted into 2-channel audio. 2) Limited AVCHD file handling: Some MTS file input formats, Panasonic for sure, seem to be distorted and blurred at the beginning (about 1-2 seconds), so that these frames become coarse-pixelated. The worse is that this is not only in the preview but also in the outputted videos. 3) Amorphous 16:9 PAL video support on 'Computer / Data' export: When using the default DVD PAL resolution of 720x576 pixels on 16:9 video footage, the exported result is always letterboxed, means cropped into a 4:3 video frame. This unfortunately ends up in losing precious pixels at your final DVD footage. The "funny" thing is that when using the 'Disc' saving feature, VideoPad can oviously handle that. So it should be only a minor effort to provide native amorphous export for 'Computer / Data' files as well (the functionality is already there, just not everywhere needed), so one would be capable to use additional software like DVD menu applications (e.g. free DVDStyler) to master DVDs. So...? Regards, Tim

Hi mate, I really can confirm what you are talking about. I'm using MTS files from a Panasonic HDC-SD100 camera. The first few seconds of a clip are always distorted - coarse-pixelating frames which one just can't accept. But not only that, this negative effect is not only in the preview but also in the exported video files Another bad thing I noticed is that you cannot use the Save Movie (Computer / Data) feature to create DVD compatible amorphous 16:9 video files, where the PAL DVD resolution of 720x576 is fully exported into your MPEG2 video. Instead, the footage is just letterboxed which means considerable loss of image quality when burning such stuff on DVD. The funny thing is that when you use the Disc saving feature, you can choose the aspect ratio before saving, and then the application exactly seems to consider this, because when using different tools like MediaInfo or VLC to analyze the finished video you will get 720x576 pixels as result with native aspect ratio still 16:9. But well, one doesn't always want to create a DVD right away, mostly you want to combine such files and create a DVD menu later... So I will try to create a DVD with 1024x576 (VideoPad's TV Wide setting) MPEG2 as basis using DVDStyler, we'll see if that is going to work. If not, the application unfortunately is only using half of it's potential, because the rest is actually great. To sum it up: Better native 16:9 support for video file export and flawless Panasonic MTS file handling, and this software would be a masterpiece. Hopefully NCH will consider this in the next program update.