Widescreen/Letterboxed Sub placement

Hi! I've got a problem with my scenarist project. I have suceccfully reauthored/reencoded the menus, and have now added the video and sound and subs for main movie. But there's one problem that arises when I have compiled the thing. My TV is a widescreen tv, so if I set the dvd player to widescreen, it plays perfect. When I set the player to 4:3, the image is still wide (doesn't add black bars on top and bottom), but the subtitles is shown below display area. When I played the original on my player set to 4:3, it added black bars and my TV switched to 4:3 mode. What can this be? have I don't something wrong when I encoded (used DAR 16x9 and all other settings should be correct). The only thing I can thing of is that the menus are 4:3 Pan & Scan, and due to that, I had to create a 4:3 pal project in Scenarist (or should I just use widescreen instead?). But does that mean I should author the main movie (since it's widescreen) in another project? I have clicked both L and W in the track editor of the subs of the main menu. Can someone enlighten me plz.. Kitchy

Can you enlighten me as to where I should put this SPRM check? I know which it is, and also how the command line should look like (an example?). Should I place it in the pre of the first PGC? Kitchy

duh, I looked back to a project I did a little bit ago.... The player automatically displays the correct subpicture track depending on the setting of aspect ratio and display mode the player. No SPRM check or anything... IF you wanted both letterbox AND pan and scan display modes, then you'd need an SPRM check to direct the navigation to the correct pgc [etc.] that contains the particular track for the intended display mode. [As the letterbox mode needs a 16:9 video and the pan and scan mode needs a 4:3 PanScan stream. Obviously, these can't both be in the same track.] Sorry about that, Dan

If you haven't solved this yet... and on the off chance of sounding stupid... It sound to me like it is your TV that is set to a display mode that expands 4:3 to 16:9? (so even though you DVD player is set to 4:3 your TV would still try to fill the entire screen) This would also explain the absence of black bars since the TV will crop those off at certain display modes... including the subs.\ Just a thought...

Well, I haven't actually figured it out yet, but I've thought about it for a while, and has seen that it won't be a problem, cause this problem only occurs on DVD players set to 4:3 when used on a widescreen tv, and people don't do that (general public). As for the problem, you're saying that it's my tv that screws it up. Well, it might, but with the same settings on my tv/dvd player on the original movie, my tv doesn't go into wide mode (when dvd player is set to 4:3), it simply adds black bars on top and bottom and tv adds black bars on each sides of the screen (not a very good solution, but just to test). On my reauthored thing (reauthored menu), when dvd player is set to 4:3, my tv goes into wide mode (as if it's getting a anamorphic widescreen signal, and it shouldn't receive that since it's actually being letterboxed by the player), but on further inspection, I can see that the picture is actually zoomed, and not real wide mode, this makes the subtitles go below screen area. When I use manual settings and set my tv to 4:3 manually, the subs and black bars are fine and dandy. The problem seems to be that my tv needs a signal to know that it's a letterboxed signal it's getting, and not a anamorphic 16x9. How I do this in scenarist I don't know, but if you got any other ideas, let me know. Kitchy

The zoom thing is indeed what I meant. I don't know if it is possible to send such a signal by doing something in Scenarist. (if indeed it is an extra(?) signal and not just the input your tv analyses) You're probably right in thinking the problem will not affect "the general public"("them"). By the way... I think you should actually do a 16:9 DVD and make the menu's so they will fit both 4:3 and 16:9. I believe there is a guide about that somewhere... or a thread...

I thought I was doing that by using pan & scan videos... Kitchy

I thought you said you had to create a "4:3 project"? There is a choice when you create a new project with the Project Wizard (step 4 encoding parameters) where you can choose 16:9 DVD Project. Although that probably just sets the defaults... So if you set everything in your tracks etc. to 16:9 in your current project it should be working also I guess...

The Scenarist simulator is not 100% proof it will work anyway outside that simulator :) at least where subtitles are concerned. My experience tells me... (sim of 720x576 subs on 352x288 video is fine but PowerDVD can't handle that... so it is not always guaranteed it works if the simulation is ok... By the way... both W and L must be on (in 16:9 track) for the subs to work right in 4:3... right? not p&s