After 6 thousand hours of working on this project: Filming, editing on iMovie HD-6 forever, and finally saving to Quicktime Movie, and then sending it to iDVD (several times), I have a movie that looks great on the computer, but on a TV, the edges fall off the screen. This is a big deal because there are words on some of those edges that are cut off. This is true of both sides of the screen on a big screen TV and a small, not HD TV.
I have saved the QT movie in a 4:3 and a 16:9 (on the advice of Applecare, and, yes, that makes no sense, but I did it anyway). Both aspects have the same consequence on the TV screen anyway.
This is a movie I made of my mother’s life, and need to send it to a lot of relatives. I don’t want there to be any glitches!!
Can anyone help?
I only have the MacBook Pro iDVD program to burn a disk with….
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Valerie
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How Do I Make a iDVD Fit On a Tv Screen?
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My guess is that you are seeing the difference between the 720x480 resolution of DVD video and the 640x480 resolution that some DVD players and TVs use as "standard definition."
No matter if you use 16:9 or 4:3, the DVD is 720x480. With 4:3 it may mean cutting off the top and bottom a little. WIth 16:9 it will mean huge black bars at the top and bottom. Can't remember exactly how each is handled. But the result is always 720x480 in size.
Then when the DVD player shows the video, you only see the 640x480 middle section of the 720x480 video.
I thought there was a way to make iDVD use your 4:3 video so there are black bars at the left and right sides. That is what you are going for. I don't have iDVD handy to check it, but look for a setting like that.
I have had this problem also. My best solution was to change programs. I created a slide show that had the edges cropped off, so I switched to FotoMagico by Boinx Software. The family DVD I made at the time contained only photos, but FotoMagico now supports movies also. I found that I could move specific screens and slides, so that nothing was cut off. I assume it will do that same for movies. I'm still ripping movies, so haven't tested it yet.
There are 2 versions of the product and a 5-day trial on the site, so you might want to check it out. http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/
Hope that helps.
I am having a similar problem. I was really proficient with the old iMovie HD 5.0.2, so transferred the application from my old iMac to my newer intel iMac, and built my movie in the old app. I ran into trouble when I tried to export my iMovie to iDVD, and the apps aren't talking to each other. (my interpretation!) Next I tried to import the movie file to the newer version of iMovie, and it completely deconstructed my movie. I don't have the time or inclination to learn the new iMovie, and the video needs to be ready for my father's funeral next week! :-( So, the long and short of it is, I figured out a way to get a good quality video into a mp4 file, and then imported the entire mp4 movie into the newer iMovie '09 version 8.0.6. Success! SORT OF. My video is now playing fine in iMovie '09, but when I burn it in iDVD (7.1.2), and put the burned DVD in a DVD player to show on a TV, it's cutting off the top (in some cases my father's missing his head!) and bottom (Look, Ma, no feet!) no matter which TV I play it on! I tried the DVD on an old 29" CRT TV with no HD capabilities, and also on my son's bigscreen HD TV. Consequently, I don't think it's the TV, I think it's the DVD. I don't know what kind of TV I will be given to use when I play the video next week at my father's funeral. I need to create a DVD that will play on any TV without my needing to change the TV settings. I could do this in the old iMovie with movies burned in iDVD, so don't know why I can't now?!
Are there settings in iMovie '09 and/or settings in iDVD that I can fix to eliminate this problem? I have tried changing the ratios, I've set my preferences in iMovie to "fit" not "cropped", and nothing works. I don't care if I have bars on the sides, or on the top or bottom, I just want my whole movie to show in the final product! I am a complete layperson, so I need a-z steps on what I need to do-- starting in settings in iMovie 09, exporting to iDVD, and finally what ratios and settings in iDVD to make this happen.
Can someone please help me FAST!???
Sounds like it is simply cropping the video to deal with the difference in screen ratios.
Why take this back into iMovie anyway? Just take your movie exported from the old iMovie and then create a new project in iDVD and bring that video into it. Then look carefully at all settings for cropping. Experiment.
Valerie (or anyone else), has the original issue been solved? I am experiencing the same problem with a project (created from AVCHD files) that I created in iMovie '11 and authored in iDVD '7.0.4 - the project looks perfect on the computer (MBP Retina) but when played through a DVD player and 1080i, widescreen TV, the sides are cut off.
Hopefully someone found a solution.