I'm trying to rip "The Abyss" DVD which is in widescreen format. Problem is that when I played it with PowerDVD and Windows Media Player, they both displayed the widescreen movie but within the confines of 4:3. So another words, there are black bars all the way around. Top, bottom, left, and right.
In fact, when I opened up DVD Decryptor that software recognized it as 4:3 only. Once it was ripped, I opened a vob file and sure enough, it looked the same as before. What can I do to fix this?
I had this problem with "Troy" and a friend said to install PowerDVD. So I did and it worked. Now "The Abyss" is giving me the problem and I'm not sure how to fix it. : (
What happens when you play the original and backups in a standalone DVD player/TV combo? I have the original of this movie but never backed it up. Will look for it and try some tests when I find it.
regards
I tried out my original of this disk. It plays as you describe in PowerDVD, DVD Shrink preview etc. If I select full screen in PowerDVD it displays on my monitor (4:3) with black bars only on the top and bottom. Width if full. It displays that same way on by HT (16:9 Anamorphic) screen.
Summing it up the copy progs are working correctly in that they are reproducing the original movie format.
Troy on the other hand shows a preview in a 16:9 box with black bars on the top and bottom only in PowerDVD. When full screen is selected picture looks like same display as 'The Abyss'. On my HT setup the bars on 'Troy' are much smaller than 'The Abyss' (on about half the amount).
Don't know if there is anything that can be done about this, seems that the copy progs are working ok, you need something to 'tweak' the picture somehow.
PS; noticed that the display box does switch to a 16:9 for a fraction on a second before reverting to 4:3 when 'The Abyss' main movie starts to play in PowerDVD.
Hey man thanks for checking this. First off, when played in a DVD player the movie looks fine, regular widescreen. So I decided to try it on another computer, and I again got the black bars all the way around. HOWEVER, I installed the retarded software that came with the DVD (interActual) and it worked fine, regular widescreen bars.
Yet, when I opened it up in DVD decryptor it still was recognized as 4:3. So I decrypted it anyway, and used Gordian Knot to encode just one of the VOBs for testing. Now when I open up the VOBs I get that bad 4 bars. So when I opened it in GK I set the resolution to Full Screen 4:3, edited that pixels and encoded. The resulting AVI file looked fine. It was the first 30 minutes of "The Abyss" in widescreen format.
I just can't understand why GK, DVD decryptor, and even my media players would think its 4:3, and force the widescreen into full screen.
