Thanks for your quick reply. I will see if this works and report back!

hi John,

It didn't work. I'll do another test and will describe exactly what I do...

1. Start MEP17

2. Create new projectest03

3. movie settings at hdtv 1080i NTSC 16:9 (1920x1080; 29.97 fps

4. set tv cropping on all 4 sides to 0%

5. import a 640x360 mp4 movie

6. a message pops up about the active resolution (see above) and my file has 640x360 (16:9), 29.97 fps.

7. I choose adjust.

8. I import a similar file, no popup

9. I click BURN

10. A popup, I choose automatic marker.

11. In the menu editor I change nothing. It is set at 16;9.

12. I click on the BURN image.

13. I choose DVD and save the project.

14. I go to encoder settings, and then to Advanced.

15. In the summary it says Aspect ratio 16:9 and resolution 720x576 (which is weird isn't it? where does that come from?)

16. under the video settings tab I go to resolution and it doesn't have my original resolution, so I leave it at that.

17. I go back and click on the burn image.

18 a popup comes up which says that the export settings differ from the movie settings.

19. to go forward I click ignore.

20 and of it goes...

21. I will post later about the result.

I hope you can tell me that I am a newbie and that the solution is really simple. It is not straightforward to me anyway...

By the way: this last image I also got with my previous test, but not before. I did check that everything was 16:9 though.

Hope you can help, as this is rather frustrating...

Thanx!

.

where I say "this last image I also got with my previous test" I mean "this last POPUP I also got with my previous test"

well, as some of you might have expected: on my tv the movie is cropped on all 4 sides. Can anyone please help?

well, as some of you might have expected: on my tv the movie is cropped on all 4 sides. Can anyone please help?

I am beginning to think the problem is with your TV. Are you sure your settings  on your TV are correct? My TV has different wide screen settings to choose from. I suggest you play around with them on your TV, assuming you have those modes.

The problem is not on my tv. I have checked all of those settings and it is easy to see that the movie is cropped on all sides.

But, to be absolutely sure, I will check the burned DVD's on other player/tv sets.

I found out that the default menu is a 4:3 menu, so I did a test with selecting a 16:9 menu (the rest is the same as in the experiment above). It gave the same result.

I am not sure about the advanced settings in the encoder settings where it says: Aspect ratio 16:9 and resolution 720x576 which sounds like (an almost) 4:3 setting. I really don't know where that comes from, and why my original 640x360 resolution cannot be selected. 640x360 is a true 16:9 resolution and I think I have checked everything that I can think of.

But on the other hand: I might be overlooking something. Movie-editing is new to me...

Hi

Do not let the 720*576 resolution fool you into thinking it is 4:3 than 16:9 for widescreen ,  720*576 is the correct ratio for standard DVD whether 4:3 or 16:9 

In widescreen 16:9 the pixels are not square but stretched slightly in the horizontal axis.  The cropping settings of 10% are OK - this will not cause your problem.

Try creating a standard widescreen movie with a single still image of 1600*900 pixels.  This should fill the screen in the preview monitor, then burn to DVD as before and test on your TV.

John

Hi John,

Thanks very much for trying to help me. I created a 1600x900 jpeg and imported it in MEP 17. In the image I put arrows at the borders.

Afrter creating a DVD from it (no settings changed, just put a 16:9 menu on it) I tried it out on my TV. And... it was cropped on all sides. And I am viewing it in "original" resolution on my TV. Also changing to other resolutions does not reveal any more of the image...

I really don't know what I am doing wrong.

Just to be absolutely sure, I will go to a friend to check the dvd there.

Do you have another trick up your sleeve?

Thanks in advance,

Lesley

By the way: there is an American flag next to this question. That is not correct. I just updated my profile to show that I am from the Netherlands. So I am burning the DVD in Standard DVD Pal Widescreen format...

Don't think that is a problem, but anyway...

Hi Lesley

I have tried to recreate your problem.  I cannot get the cropping on the finished DVD however I suspect the problem may be at step 7 where you click adjust. 

Try again with a new project setting the initial movie size to 720*576 16:9 PAL (this are the standard settings for PAL DVDs) when you import your video click do not adjust, this will keep the movie at the full resolution.

Clicking adjust at step 7 changes the resolution of the project to match the imported file and I suspect that for some reason the video produced by the down scaling from 1920*1080 to 720*576  is making your movie be included at its original size of 620*360 inside the 720*576 and is giving you the cropping.

John

Hi,

I'm not sure I've understood fully, but presumably you get this cropping when you play the DVD on your PC too? I'm assuming that's why you're 100% confident it's not simply the normal 'overscan' issue that affects all TVs. Not just CRTS but LCD flat screen types. My Panasonic (admittedly not state of the art as it's 5 years old) loses about 10%. So I have MEP set to show me a white rectangle within the 10% edges:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/MEP-TVBorders.jpg

I keep all critical content (titles, faces, etc) within that.

P.S. Re the flag issue. I reckon it's a buggy magix.info feature. I get the same happening quite often. I posted about it earlier today:

http://www.magix.info/us/my-country-changes-when-i-switch-between-forum-and.forum.549552.html

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi John,

Thank you very much. It seems to work now. I tried it with the 1600x900 image first, which didn't work, but then I tried with the movies I mentioned before. The movie was 100% in view on the TV. The only thing was a rather big black border, which was because I tested with the TV cropping set at 35% I have set it back at the standard 10% and this seems to work. So the TV cropping is important and now I know how it works. The other things don't seem logical to me, but for now I am content that it works. Understanding may come later...

I will do a complete test, with everything in it (complete menu, all movies imported etc.) and will tell you if it worked.

Thanks again! It is nice to know that there are people out there that care, and do their best to help out others.

Till later,

Lesley

Hi Terry,

The last post from John helped me to solve this. I need the 10% TV cropping, but that was not the original problem. Although I do not fully understand why things work OK now, and not the way I did it (which seemed quite logical to me), I am happy for now. Understanding may come later, just as with a lot of other things in life.

I have seen more buggy things in the user interface of this forum, but a flag issue is not of great importance to me. It was worth mentioning though because I live in Europe and so I need to use PAL (which could have been the cause of my problem, who knows?)

All the best,

Lesley

Hi John,

Everything is working now. I did a complete test, with a working menu and so on. The only thing is that I found out that I used a 4:3 background for the menu, so the menu came out as 4:3 (but the rest is OK). I can fix that and get on with why I bought MEP in the first place.

Thanks again!

Lesley

Hi

Thats great - pleased to hear your now up and running.

Cheers

John

To make the cropping set in the "Movie effects settings" > "TV Picture" tab active, you need to right click the any video clip in the timeline and check mark "border cropping adjustment". The picture will then shrink in the preview monitor by the percentage you have set for each of the 4 picture edges.

I thought I would point this out in case you were unsure how you got to the point where the cropping worked for you, as it seems now to be.

There is a section in the help files under "image improvements for the entire movie" > "TV Picture" which describes how all this works and how there is a pre made test project with a scale. You can load this project and burn this image to disc for playback on your TV. Unfortunately Magix has not seen fit to update this image to widescreen, so you would have to zoom and stretch it a bit for it to be any use, unless you have a 4:3 TV.

Cheers

Ss

Hi Scenestealer,

Thanks for pointing this out to me. I didn't know about right-clicking video's in the time-line to check the border-cropping adjustment. It was checked in my case (without me knowing about it...).

I have found out that a border cropping setting of 10% is right (which is the default). I have that, which works very nice for playing my videos, BUT this setting is also applied in the scene-preview in my DVD menu, which is unwanted, because now there is a black border around the scene preview. I have thought about making my own dvd-menu template, but have not found the way to do this  (as of now, just started looking for it). Maybe you can point me in the right direction to solve this...

Another problem that is still there is with the background I am using for the menu. It is a 640x360 background and it gets cropped too. Do I need to give the image a white border before I use it as a background? It sounds a little silly to me, Any ideas?