I need an anamorphic test pattern for my DVD player. Just a plain grid so that I can get the geometry on my TV set right. Many people, here and elsewhere, suggested AVIA, so I got it quite a while ago. Annoyingly, they don't have an anamorphic test pattern. They have a 16:9 test pattern squished into 4:3, but they didn't set the anamorphic flag on the DVD for that section, telling you to manually set your TV to 16:9. Well, my TV doesn't allow me to do that, making it useless.

So I want to create a DVD that just has a single five-minute or so long anamorphic track with a regular grid. I have a DVD burner. I think I can create a proper MPEG-2 by getting a trial version of TMPEGEnc. But I don't have any DVD authoring software. Nor do I know how to manually create the appropriate filesystem structure by hand. If anyone could loan me some DVD authoring software or point me to a trial version that has the one feature I'm looking for (an anamorphic setting), I'd really appreciate it.

I know this reads like trolling for warez, but I swear I have no interest in keeping it. I just wanna create the one thing. If someone else has the proper tools, I suppose I could get you to create a DVD and mail it to me. I suppose I could also create the appropriate source material here, send it to you and have you send me back a UDF filesystem image for me to write directly to a DVD, if that's feasible.

Can anyone help?

You can download tmpgenc dvd autthor to create a dvd. As for the anamorphic flag, you can either encode the mpeg with it (my canopus encoder does this) or download ifoedit to just edit the ifo file. Just don't burn the dvd image directly to the dvd burner before editting the ifo file. Any dvd writing tool will burn a dvd. I usually use nero rather than the s/w that tmpgenc dvd author uses.

Excellent. I didn't realize there was a trial for that.

telling you to manually set your TV to 16:9. Well, my TV doesn't allow me to do that, making it useless.

*BOGGLE*

I didn't know there was a such thing. This totally surprises me.

There are enough commercial DVDs out there which are incorrectly mastered (having many different kinds of flag problems, not just the one you cited), that I can't imagine a company deliberately making a TV which doesn't let you manually set the aspect ratio.

The only example I've seen of this problem has been the exact opposite: When getting a progressive-scan signal from a DVD player, my TV is locked into widescreen mode because it treats a progressive-scan signal as if it were a high-def signal. But I can "go narrow" simply by making the DVD player work in interlaced mode.

Are you SURE there's no way to control the aspect ratio, either on the TV or the DVD player? What make/model of TV and DVD player are you using?

And by the way, don't automatically assume that your DVD player will play a recordable DVD. Mine won't.

Tangentially related, by the way... I know it doesn't solve your problem because this deals with Video CDs and I'm sure THOSE don't even HAVE anamorphic flags... but anyway.... link.

Perhaps you can set your DVD player to 16:9 mode? I have a DVD player which doesn't look to the DVD for the correct geometry signal, instead I have to set it manually, which is annoying since it makes my TV always go to widescreen mode even for video which isn't anamorphic widescreen. Maybe you can do something similar?

The dvdauthor program has a flag to set the video aspect ratio. I've never used dvdauthor though, so can't personally vouch for whether it works.

Peter

I've looked many times. The settings for the TV's widescreen mode are "Off" and "Auto". "Auto" looks for a signal of some nature from the DVD player (or other source, I suppose). When I set the DVD player to 16:9 mode, it still sends 4:3 to the TV when the disc tells it to. That is, many DVDs switch back and forth, often with only the movie being in 16:9 and the menus being in 4:3. Even when the menus are 16:9, I don't think I've ever seen any extras that get displayed 16:9.

I don't think I've ever seen any extras that get displayed 16:9.

Some do. It all depends on how much effort they wanted to put into things like the deleted scenes and such. I've seen some anamorphic deleted scenes.


(ps- In case you're interested, reviews at DVDfile.com will usually tell you if there are extras in anamorphic widescreen.)

Regardless, my point being that the TV almost always switches back and forth during a single DVD, which makes me that much more pissed at the AVIA folks for claiming that they couldn't do the same thing.

don't automatically assume that your DVD player will play a recordable DVD

Right. I've checked it out in the past, and I seem to remember that it will. I'll definitely double-check before I get started, if only to see if I can use an RW or if I need to waste an R.

Regardless, my point being that the TV almost always switches back and forth during a single DVD, which makes me that much more pissed at the AVIA folks for claiming that they couldn't do the same thing.

Yeah, you're right. My father's player will take a widescreen DVD I've authored, and you can see it adjusting to the proper ratio.

I would have mentioned the program I use, but I thought you wanted something small and simple and (since some have suggested it), cheap. But anyway, you could do a trial of DVDlab. It's one of the few pieces of software that I've paid for at the end of a trial.

I was doing about the same thing as you for my TV. I just made a little grid graphic in PSP, turned it into a video with Premiere, saved it as a mpeg2 (though you could do this afterward), and imported it into DVDlab.