Posted by webpa on 10/15/06 16:56

EASTVANTRADING wrote:
> Re: Help needed. DVD playback on TV warped and distorted
>
> Hi there,
>
> Here's hoping you experts can help me out. I am trying to make a
> video sequence out of black and white photographic stills, each
> transitioned by fade out/in. I have had success in making a file that
> plays back on the computer and monitor.
>
> The problem is, when I make a DVD of this sequence and play it back on
> a DVD player to a TV, the image becomes distorted: the bottom half of
> the image bulges, stretches out towards the left and right, as if one
> took the two bottom corners and pulled them outwards and then back in.
> One can see the pushing-pulling effect in motion through the duration
> of the image. It looks as if the bottom half is underwater or is viewed
> through a fisheye lens. It is driving me crazy!
>
> -The file plays fine on the PC/Mac, both from DVD and hard drive on a
> monitor.
> -If I activate an onscreen menu from the DVD player (not a DVD menu),
> over the distorted video, it too becomes distorted.
> -My commercial DVDs play fine
>
> I have:
> -Corrected for aspect ratio of the pixels & tried without correction as
> well (square vs. rectangular)
> -Tried a huge range of different image resolutions to start
> -used TIFF and JPEGs
>
> Made the video on:
> Different computers MAC/PC, Final Cut/Ulead
> -I even tried using a slide show program that output to DVD
> -Two different DVD authoring programs
> -Played back through 2 DVD players, 2 TVs
>
> Possible things I haven't tried:
> Using different media (I used FUJI DVD-R)
> Using a third DVD player (the 2 I used were Toshiba, old & new)
>
> Does anyone have any advice, or know what's going on here? I'm
> afraid I maybe missed something really simple. Any help would be
> appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Evan
>
> Reply »

As noted by a previous respondent, this sounds exactly like "blooming"
in your TV display. If the TV display (meaning receiver, monitor, etc)
works satisfactorily with other DVDs, then here are some possibilities:

1. Your MPEG2 encoding software is not making a "NTSC (or PAL)
compliant" video stream. Meaning that the white video level is out of
range for white and the black is out of range for black. This can make
it impossible for a TV monitor/receiver to correctly display the
picture (but have no effect on a computer display/monitor...which is a
very different animal).

2. Your TV display monitor has serious problems (power supply, black
restoration, demodulator(s). Test the "problem" DVD in another TV
display/DVD player combination.

3. Your set-top DVD player has a problem....because of the DVD's
encoding errors (#1 above), it thinks the picture information includes
an intermittent "MACROVISION" flag and toggles it on and off. (My
first Sony player did this on a a regular basis).

Good luck.

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