iDVD users find that 4:3 ratio movies are being converted to widescreen

Users who have video content in standard 4:3 ratios may find that upon importing the movie into iDVD the file becomes stretched into a widescreen format. This seems to primarily affect Final Cut Express users who are using iDVD to compile disks; however, while some have suspected FCP to be the problem, the movies play in the standard ratio and for all intents and purposes appear to be in a legitimate 4:3 format:

Anthony Gleaton writes:

"I've created a 4:3 movie sequence in Final Cut Express and exported it via the Quicktime export option (not conversion). The resulting .mov file is 720 x 480 --> 4:3 format. This plays fine on my computer within Quicktime...no letterboxes. I can even select all the chapters. However, when I import this 4:3 .mov file into a 4:3 iDVD theme, the chapter pages stretch the small chapter videos into widescreen looking boxes."

This problem is not just with the preview of movies in iDVD, as burning the content to a disk retains the movies in the stretched format. The option in iDVD to manually set the 4:3 ration does not have any affect.

Several users have experimented with the iDVD setup, and have found this problem to be linked to both standalone AIFF audio clips (such as Apple's provided iLife Sound Effects) as well as video that contains problematic audio.

Fixes

Ensure your software is fully updated Apple has just released iDVD version 7.0.2 which may address this problem. The software should be available in Software Update, or available here.

Convert all AIFF files used in the theme to another format such as MP3 or AAC Several users have noticed that AIFF sound clips and loops were causing the problem, and converting them to MP3 fixed the issue. While not all AIFF files are problematic, converting them all beforehand ensures they all will work.

Downsample movie audio For some users, converting the audio sampling rate in movie clips from 48KHz to 44KHz fixed the issue. To do this, re-export the movie files using quicktime or another movie editor and ensure the audio channels have a different sample rate, and then try them again in iDVD.

Rearrange video files If there is an individual movie clip that does display properly in iDVD, placing it first in the sequence that's being imported to iDVD seems to set iDVD properly, without having to individually edit all clips in the sequence. This indicates that if editing of the clips is required, users only need to edit the first clip in the movie sequence and then reassemble and import them.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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