How To
Widescreen in iDVD 5? Almost, Not Quite
The Setup
A big feature of iMovie 5 and iDVD 5 is the ability to work with and prepare 16:9 widescreen content. All’s well until you actually burn your finished iDVD project. Pop the completed DVD into your player, and your pretty 16:9 picture suddenly has everyone looking like stick people, having stretched it (or squeezed it, depending on your point of view) to 4:3.
Did no one on Apple’s iDVD development team take the time to actually burn a DVD from the beta versions of iDVD 5? The widescreen preview works just fine when you check your finished project within iDVD. The problem only happens when you either burn a project or save it to an image.
The Problem
The reason this bug is present is because iDVD incorrectly sets a single binary value to 1 instead of 0 in the .IFO and .BUP files that correspond to widescreen .VOB titles. If this value is set to 1, it instructs a DVD player to prohibit shifting to widescreen mode, even though another binary value that specifies the 16:9 format instead of 4:3 is properly set.
The Solution
The simple translation of how to fix it is to open the .IFO and .BUP files, change the value (you do it in hexadecimal, which means it changes from 4F to 4E), save, then burn to DVD.
The reality is, it’s a bit trickier because you have to first copy iDVD’s disk image to your hard drive, change the read-only permissions on both the files and the VIDEO_TS folder to permit writing, save the changes, then run the whole folder through DVD Imager which saves a new disk image to burn that will be recognizable by DVD players.
The Elaboration
David C. Althoff Jr.—someone who knows a lot more about this kind of stuff than I do—wrote a complete storyline on his examination of the issue. If you want to get straight to the instructions, they’re at the very bottom of the page, but this “cookbook” is missing the part about changing the 4F to 4E that I described (and is mentioned up higher on Althoff’s page). Althoff also doesn’t specifically mention anywhere on the page that you’ll need to change the permissions on the files and the enclosing folder before you can save your edited files. He only alludes to it.
In addition, the first step involving Anamorphiciser can be skipped if your movies originated in iMovie 5. This step is only needed if you’re taking 16:9 clips directly from a raw file into iDVD 5.
The Wait
So that you’ll know how much time you’ll be facing, I’ve just completed burning a DVD with a bit less than 90 minutes of widescreen content. My computer has been chomping on the various rendering, copying, importing, etc. tasks for nearly 15 hours. Perhaps just under an hour of this time could have been saved if I hadn’t needed to re-import part of the video back into iMovie to correct my own goof, but the time also includes the conversion of two DivX AVI files to DV format, which then had to go through conversion once again as iMovie turned those DV files into something it could chew on.
But all this doesn’t mean I’ve been busy for 15 hours to get the DVD made. The majority of it was simply unattended processing while I caught up on some movies and TV shows, paid some bills, and did a load of laundry. My actual babysitting time was no more than an hour—probably only about a half hour.
So there you have it—whether you’re converting HD DivX files (ffmpegX is a great tool for doing this task) or working with 16:9 content from your own DV camera—until Apple fixes this goof in iDVD 5, you now know what you’ll be in for to get a true 16:9 picture to show up on your television.
Copyright © 2005 Lee Bennett,
lbennett@atpm.com.
Also in This Series
- Give Alert Sounds a Little Personality · March 2012
- Create Your Own iPhone Ringtones · February 2012
- Create Your Own Homemade Audio Book · December 2011
- Upgrade to Lion Painlessly · August 2011
- Make the Most of TextEdit · July 2011
- Using the Free Disk Utility on Your Mac · May 2011
- Making Use of QuickTime X · March 2011
- Making the Most of What’s Already on Your Mac · February 2011
- Making the Most of What’s Already on Your Mac · January 2011
- Complete Archive
Reader Comments (33)
After a bit of playing around and research on the internet, I came upon the following set of steps:
1. Open new iMovie project.
2. In window that pops up, select DV widescreen (or DV 16:9, not sure and I'm not at home to doublecheck).
3. Import WS footage from camcorder.
4. After editing footage in iMovie, create a DVD from iMovie.
The result was a perfect anamorphic widescreen DVD (as far as I could tell). When I mounted the disc image, it played as widescreen on my Mac. When I played it back on my WS TV, it played perfectly as an anamorphic movie. I then set my TV up for 4:3 mode (gray bars on the side) and told my player to use 4:3 Letterbox mode and I got a nice letterboxed widescreen image inside the 4:3 window.
The only thing I haven't tried is to import a WS video file into an existing iDVD project, though I suspect it would work just fine.
My only complaint about the final product is that the menu was not widescreen and the photo I put there was horizontally stretched when I had my TV in FULL mode.
I'm using OS 10.4.1 with the latest versions of iMovie and iDVD. Did I miss something, or have I accidentally stumbled onto a different way to create a WS DVD?
Brian
I found that I could also add widescreen iMovie projects to my iDVD project by doing an IMPORT. This results in good anamorphic widescreen clips.
Guess I'm curious as to why there seems to be some thought that this doesn't work properly.
Brian
The fact that you are using a 16:9 television—even though you say you tried setting it for 4:3 mode—is the only thing I can figure that is making the difference for you.
http://www.phasevelocity.org/idvd-ws-fix.tar.gz
Feel free to send comments or fixes to the address given in the readme.
And, reading the rest of these comments, my script fixes the BUP files and also works for PAL dvds.
It is now available at http://www.phasevelocity.org/idvd-ws-fix/
The problem is when using widescreen content outside of iMovie. It seems to always make a SD 4:3 disc by streatching the content.
Also I don't know how to run a Perl script from 10.4.4 - do I need to install Perl first? I am very sorry to be such a newbe and pain but I really need to fix the widescreen aspect of the DVD I need to courier tomorrow!!!
many thanks for help!
It's not line 200 it is byte 0x200, where 200 is base 16 (hexadecimal). You need to use a hex editor.
Copying VTS files to temporary directory.
Found no .IFO files to work with. Exiting. at /Users/anna/Desktop/idvd-ws-fix-1.1/idvd-ws-fix line 121.
what should I do?
Thank you for your patience!
A.
and if I try to do it using HexEdit, what am I looking for - which line/cell I need to correct - sorry, I really don't understand it! please explain it if possible!
Almost despaired - but thankfully another search yielded myDVDEdit which easily did the job!!!!
Would be interested to know, though, why idvd-ws-fix did not work, and where on earth is this 0x200 cell...
These are the instructions I wrote for myself to use idvd-ws-fix and it works every time:
Place idvd-ws-fix and mkisofs in a folder in apps
Mount the disc image to be fixed
open terminal
drag idvd-ws-fix onto terminal window
paste --output=my-new-disc.img "/Volumes/MY_BROKEN_DISC" after text created by previous operation
change MY_BROKEN_DISC to name of disc image
hit return
wait and watch
look for my-new-disc.img
Just so you know where it is in HexEdit (I am not going into file permissions and saving etc)
Mount the disc
Open HexEdit
from HexEdit open a .IFO on the dvd
down the left of HexEdit look for 00000200 and you should see 4e, 4f,5e or 5f as the first entry.
If not try "Find" "Go to address" enter 200
Still a problem check that "Options" "Use decimal address" is not ticked
Still a problem, try a different .IFO file
If still a problem, give up and get some sleep. You are not cut out for this sort of thing.
In what format does iDVD 6 burn wide screen movies? 720p? 1040i? 1040p? Or does it just stretch 480 pixels.
I am trying to make a movie of digital images that play on my HDTV (native resolution = 720p). I would use images of 1080x720, 1920x1080, or 3008x1692.
James
Granted, 480p (progressive) is better quality than 480i (interlaced) television, but it's not HD. Your HD television will upscale the resolution to fill the screen.
(By the way, just FYI, you probably meant 1080i and p, not 1040.)
Some more to consider is that I don't expect you have a 1080p television. They exist, but not very common and very expensive. Most HD sets available today are 1080i which, in some respects is virtually the same resolution as 720p. Regardless, to get the best resolution of your pictures to your HD television, you'd want to connect your computer to a TV's DVI jack and run the slide show to it just like it was a secondary computer display.
What isn't covered though, is how to easily save the edited VIDEO_TS files (since you can't easily write to a disc image). The easy way I used was to simply copy the VIDEO_TS folder from the disc image to a folder on my drive. I could then use myDVDEdit to edit the files and save them (although you might have to change permissions on the VIDEO_TS folder and contents first so you can write to it). Lastly, I used Toast to make the DVD using its "DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS" setting. Drag the adjusted folder to Toast and burn, baby, burn! Works well.
Many thanks!
I wonder how much longer it will take Apple to update iDVD 6 to actually do what it says on the tin.
I have anamorphic 16x9 QuickTime .MOV files I created from my Final Cut Pro project file. These do not appear as widescreen in a WS iDVD project. That started all of this.
I've created a new copy of the video using Anamorphicizer -- no luck
When I run idvd-ws-fix from terminal,
I created an image file from iDVD and mounted the image file as TEST_DVD. In terminal I ran the script:
/Applications/idvd-ws-fix-1.1/idvd-ws-fix --output=my-new-disc.img "/Volumes/TEST_DVD"
Copying VTS files to temporary directory.
/Applications/idvd-ws-fix-1.1/mkisofs: Warning: -follow-links does not always work correctly; be careful.
2.95% done, estimate finish Sat Jan 19 11:11:00 2008
5.90% done, estimate finish Sat Jan 19 11:10:43 2008
....
The script ran fine and created my-newl-disc.img in the applications folder where I had stored the script folder.
HOWEVER, when I mounted the new image and played it in the MAC DVD player, my anamorphic video was still crushed to 4x3. Very frustrating.
I then opened a .IFO file form the new image TS_VIDEOS directory in HexEdit. When I look at 00000200 all I see is a row of zeros.
Next, I mounted the image again and copied both TS directories into a test directory. I changed permissions in both AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories to read & write, apply to everything (requires your user password to confirm).
I opened the VVIDEO_TS directory in myDVDEdit. I edited: VMG Menu; VTS Menu 1; and VTS 1. In each case, using the VMG or VTS menu tab, I changed Aspect from Auto pan Pan&Scan Letterbox to 16x9 for both VMG Menu and VTS Menu; and from 4x3 to 16x9 for VTS 1. myDVDEdit stated that the video aspect ratio is not the sasme as the stream one. Do you want to correct the VOB files? I hit CORRECT.
When I opened the VIDEO_TS folder in DVD player, my anamorphic video finally played wide screen.
I ran this test again from a new disk image created from iDVD. I mounted the image, copied the TS directories in to a second test folder, changed permissions on both TS directories, then opened the new test directory in myDVDEdit. I made all the changes noted above and hit SAVE.
I opened the new test VIDEO_TS directory in DVD player and my anamorpohic video played wide screen.
I believe I had tried this before with no luck because I failed to change VTS 1 to 16x9.
Next I burned a DVD from the image file using Disk Utility.
When I played it with DVD player -- back to square one! The anamorpohic video played squished as 4x3. Did the same when I played it on my setup DVD player attached to a 4x3 crt TV.
I opened the VTS_01_O.IF, in HexEdit, scrolled down to 00000200 and found the first entry was 4F. I changed this to 4E and saved the file. Did the same for BTS_01_0.BUP. I left the VIDEO_TS.IFO file set to 00
I then burned a new DVD. No luck.
Please add your findings to this thread.
Finally the following link helped me out.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305337-de
Greetings
Roland
i had a similar problem as listed here. I also could not achieve a 16:9 looking file when i put my .mov (made in FCP) into idvd6, it would squish it down to 4:3 even though the idvd menu would be 16:9. To fix this i exported the file out of final cut pro in quicktime conversion instead of quicktime, and ticked the box for 16:9, and then idvd recognised that it was a 16:9 file.
So that solved that problem for me.
But then when i burn the dvd and play it on a 4:3 tv, the tv cuts off the sides of the picture although the aspect is right. i want it to be letterboxed when played on a 4:3 tv. When i burn this file in toast, it letterboxes the file for a 4:3 tv but then the menus are not great. i want to be able to get a letterboxed 16:9 dvd from idvd. Any help??
Thanks!
thanks!
Right now I've run into a problem that looks different but might be related: a DVD made with iDVD 5 in 4:3 and played back to a 16:9 TV is being displayed full-width, but cut off at top and bottom. I take it that "pillarboxing" is what I'm after. Is that a parameter of the DVD as well and if so, where would I need to look?
Thanks in advance for any hints!
Alternatively, you may possibly need to check a similar setting on the TV.
Also keep in mind this article was for 2 prior versions of iDVD. I haven't perceived a need for the above information in the latest version of iDVD 7.
Let me first say that I don't even have a TV, or a DVD player outside my computer for that matter. (And I am still running iLife 5 on Tiger as I didn't see the need or incentive to upgrade, rather the opposite.)
I occasionally burn DVDs documenting events, that are then handed out to a number of people. Which means that I don't have any control whatsoever over their TV or DVD player setup.
For that reason it also doesn't help me to burn my DVDs such that they run fine on either 4:3 (which they did) or 16:9 displays, they need to function on both.
When I recently got the feedback that my DVD did not play properly on a widescreen TV (it was not squeezed, by the way, but the top and bottom were cut off), I thought it reasonable to assume that 4:3 DVDs are still common enough that if people complain to me about mine not working, it's probably a problem with my DVD rather than with playing 4:3 DVDs on their setup in general. The latter is of course possible, just not very likely IMHO, as the people would probably have encountered the issue earlier and not complained to me about my particular DVD.
So I decided to do some research but didn't find anything. On a hunch, and because iMovie has a setting to "allow automatic letterboxing/pillowboxing", I then instead searched for letterboxing problems and came across this post. And then thought that the problem described in it sounded awfully similar to mine, even if experiencing it from the "opposite direction".
Who knows, perhaps it's even both governed by the same bit in the end?
So I created a disk image, changed the appropriate bits to allow automatic letterboxing and disallow pan/scan, burned a DVD, handed it to the complainant, asked them to try it out on both of their TVs (one widescreen, one 4:3), and waited. Which explains why I'm only getting back to you now, because I only heard back from them about an hour ago.
And guess what: it works.
So the same bit that allows or disallows automatic letterboxing does the same for pillowboxing. Who would've thunk? (Apart from me, I mean... ;-))
Apologies for the long post, I just thought it appropriate to explain my thinking behind posting here in the first place, and why I thought my question might not be as off-topic as some seem to think.
And hoped that someone might have been able to answer my question off the bat - playing a 4:3 DVD on a widescreen TV to me doesn't seem like such an unusual thing to try to do.
Never mind, I hope this information is of use, or at least of interest, to someone.
If you still think I'm off topic then please accept my apologies. I'll be gone in a moment and also have something to offer that is definitely on topic:
When editing my .IFO (and .BUP) files, I found that the lines starting at offset 0x200 contained all zeros. However the value I was looking for (in my case 0x53) could be found at offset 0x100.
Another close look at the IFO file description shows that this is totally correct. If looking at "VTS" files (right column, named "VTS_xx_n.IFO"), the Byte in question resides at offset 0x200; while in "VMG" files (left column, named "VIDEO_TS.IFO"), it's at 0x100. (Another easy way to tell them apart is that VTS files start with the string "DVDVIDEO-VTS" and VMG files with "DVDVIDEO-VMG".)
Might well explain why some posters here were unable to find the Byte, and why the "idvd_ws_fix" perl script also failed to work for some - it only works with VTS files. (Which also contain a "VSTM_VOB" video attributes Byte at 0x100, whatever that is good for.)
As for handling the DVD image, after some tedious and unsuccessful attempts with writeable images and all that I just converted the original image file into an uncompressed one and opened that with HexEdit.
Then just search for "DVDVIDEO-" and depending on whether that's followed by "VTS" or "VMG", check the 256th (0x100) or 512th (0x200) Byte after the initial "D".
Not the schoolbook method, for sure, but it works, and rather painlessly.
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