Hi, I've burned a few movies to VCD using Nero, but have found that if the film was letterboxed (black bars top and bottom) then Nero stretches the image to fill the screen and thus makes everything look tall and skinny. If I watch the films with Windows Media player they're fine, but Nero insists on removing the black bars. How can I get it to stop stretching the image? Would appreciate any suggestions on what the problem could be - Thanks

-- Stefan Zadravec (stefan@podgedog.com), November 08, 2001

Answers

Are U ripping off DVDs?? Most DVD *.VOBs (but not all) are 16:9 MPEG- 2 streams and converted as-is to MPEG-1 the flag that signifies it is 16:9 is removed (since there are no provisions for auto-16:9 detection in MPEG-1). Your player then has no way of knowing it is 16:9 and displays them skinny. To detect and re-encode 16:9 streams properly one way is with DVD2AVI, details Galore in www.flexion.org.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), November 09, 2001.