Burning DVD's with nero 7

I've been burning DVD's with Nero for a long time. One thing I've always found annoying is that it takes dvd's that are in letterbox format and changes them into full screen format. In the past I didn't care much because I had a smaller lcd. Now that I have a 46" lcd I don't like how it degrades the quality of the dvd by changing it to full screen. Does anyone know how to make it so that it doesn't do this. I was messing around with settings quite a lot this morning and I couldn't figure it out.

 

If all your doing is copying existing DVD's then its probably not the disk but the settings on your media player or the video output settings on your stand alone DVD player set incorrectly. For example, on my pioneer player I sometimes have to hit the home menu button, then intitial settings, and then video output/tv screen and select either 4:3 letter box, or 4:3 pan/scan or 16:9 wide to get the correct aspect ratio. On your PC look for the aspect ratio controls (usually just right click on the video to select) and adjust the aspect ratio. Now if you are creating your own DVD's and transcoding then there is something else probably set wrong. But still I don't think it would change the aspect radio. One thing I really don't like about nero is its inability to correctly set the layer breaks on dual layer DVD's. I use IMGburn for that since it actually lets you manually select the layer break and it actually works unlike Nero. I wonder if Nero ever got the dual layer support working worth a crap on versions 8 or 9?

 

The thing is that the file on my computer is a movie that is in letterbox format. It's in AVI format. When it's played through the file it's fine. However, once burned it seems that nero is changing this. I watch non-burned movies on my dvd player and they're fine. The settings on the tv are correct. However, if it's a burned movie it changes the format....the problem with nero is that i've checked video options and it doesn't seem to have an option to change this. The 16:9 option is checked so that can't be the problem and there doesn't seem to be any solutions.

Is imgburn free and will it turn .avi files into a format that can be played on any standard dvd player?

 

Yes Imgburn is free but its not a transcoding software. Mainly I use it to burn Iso's images and dual layer. What I use for coverting AVI's to DVD is a program called SVCD2DVD and it works really well. Its not free but its a strong reliable program that gets the job done. You need MS 2.0 net installed (free) for it to run.

 

Well, I got image burn. I convert the .avi into .iso. If i burn this .iso using imgburn do you think the results will come out better and will i be able to play this back on a standalone dvd player.

 

Probably not but you can give it a shot. ISO is just an image of the Vob titleset etc.. Its not going to change how it was transcoded.

Personally, I don't like hassling with converting AVI's to DVD anymore.. First, it takes along time to transcode it to DVD format. Second, it wastes the space of a blank DVD. DVD players as well as many portable video devices can play DIVX or XVID's in their native format. I bought three pioneer DV 393 dvd players for my house and they all play AVI's divx xvid with AC3 surround sound etc.. I can fit up to 6 movies on one blank DVD and I don't have to fuss with converting them. Do yourself a big favor and just get a player that can play those files. It will pay for itself for the savings in blank discs. Better yet, get one (like a philips dvd player) that has USB and you can just copy the movie to a flash drive and then just plug that into the player. If you don't like the movie or don't care to watch it again you can just delete the file and not waste any media storing it. For me, transcoding to dvd is too time consuming and in the long run, costs you more then just upgrading your dvd player.

 

Typically I do just put them onto a thumb drive and then play them from my PS3. However, sometimes for some reason they don't play on it or sometimes I go out to my parents home for the weekend where they don't have a DVD player. This is the DVD player at their house. I bought it for them a little more than 1 year ago.

http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/3560.asp

would avi's, divx, etc. work on that?

Oh, and thanks for all the help.

 

The Denon DVD-1940CI does say it supports divx so my guess it probably will playback divx/xvid files. BTW that looks like a pretty nice piece of kit. It used to be that only the cheaper players would support the additional formats. But now more and more people are looking for players to include those formats and probably the high end manufacturers like denon got sick of people returning their units because they could only playback dvd formats and nothing else. At this point in time, its stupid to waste money on players that don't playback the other formats. Personally, my next purchase will probably be one of the newer media hard drives that can output 1080P files via mkv files through HDMI straight to HD TV as well as most other formats. Not sure you may be able to do that already with PS3 but the factory firmware probably prohibits that.

 

I suspect that it should play on the Denon. I got a great deal on the player at the time. Much cheaper than what they have it listed at on their website. Also, the PS3 doesn't play back .MKV files unfortunately. I'm sure they could release an update that allows for the playback of those files if people start complaining. Anyways, thanks for all the help!