MPG Export bad aspect ratio

[ernie225]

hi, i'm new to edius and i'm just about to finish my first editing project.
unfortunately the mpg export gives me bad aspect ratio and i have not found any threads in this forums dealing with this problem.

source material is 1280*720 xvid from a odys digital camera. the import into edius went fine.
when i export to MPG the maximum resolution i can choose is 720*480.
media player tells me the exported file is 853*480 which is actually closer to the 16:9 source format than the proposed 720*480.

when i play the file on my lcd tv the picture is sqeezed and i get black bars above and below the picture. player is a dreambox 7020.

media player plays the file correctly.

what am i doing wrong?

[tingsern]

What software are you using to export the timeline to MPEG? And secondly, are you choosing MPEG1 or MPEG2? What parameters do you supply to the software to convert from timeline to MPEG?:

[ernie225]

i'm using edius 4.51.
i press F11 and from the list i choose MPEG.
the filetype is "MPEG2 Program stream".
in video settings i can choose from 720*480, 352*480 and 352*240. CBR or VBR and the bit rate. then there is an "advanced" tab, where i didn't change anything.

[tingsern]

Can you try playing that same DVD you just burnt on a PC DVD software player? Freeware like AVS DVD player will do. Does it play normally? If it does, I suspect it might be your standalone DVD player then.

[ernie225]

i should have mentioned, the dreambox is not a dvd player, its a linux based DVB-S receiver/VDR.

probably you are right anyway. media player 11 and VLC are playing the file with correct AR.

[tingsern]

If your DVD played fine on software DVD player, I would definitely suspect the problem is your Dreambox then.

[STORMDAVE]

Try MPEG (Generic) exporter, unless that's what you were using in the first place...there is also SpeedEncoder...

Use Closed GOP in the Generic exporter, that might get rid of a few problems.

[antonsvideo]

since you are in Germany, Pal country, you should not be using 720x480, you should be selecting 720x576

if your project setting is 16:9, then the resulting mpeg will be 720x576 with 16:9 flag embedded so that the DVD player knows to play rectangular pixel
720x1.42 = 1024

so the DVD player will act as if playing 1024x576 (correct for Pal 16:9)

alternatively, you can export with Procoder Express and in advanced settings, choose 16:9 and be sure to close GOP