Windows DVD Maker Aspect Ratio problems

MS have obviously stopped monitoring this thread so I think it might be worth starting a brand new one. Work-arounds really don't cut it when Win 7 was sold to me as this big multimedia platform and  it turns out to not even be able to burn DVDs correctly. I'm frankly astonished that MS have swept this under the carpet. Nothing like being ignored to make you feel like a valued customer

Yes, I have to agree that, for now, the simplest solution is, as you suggest, to revert to the older release of WMM. And curiously, the problem is not even in WMM itself, but in WDM. The later WMM is actually better in some senses; it is just that WDM misinterprets the improved pixel aspect ratio information. I wasn't aware of the 2.6 version or it's video overlay capability. Sounds useful.

I live in hope that MS employees read these threads and sometimes spot that someone has supplied them the information which will allow them to fix a problem easily; and that this will prompt them to take some action.

I have to agree that, in this case, the time elapsed since there was any change in this area suggests that the chances of this bug being fixed are low.

The most recent "change" here is probably the inability of Windows 8 users to even install WDM. One can only speculate as to reasons for this: loss of the developers, a desire to stop undercutting software vendors selling DVD mastering tools (or an arrangement reached with some of them), loss of some required components from Windows 8 (there are several things missing from Windows 8 that used to be in Windows 7). It's not obvious to me what could make MS drop an obviously useful program like this and so encourage users over to Mac.

Windows 8 rather saddens me: it used to be that successive releases of Windows removed bad aspects of older releases and added many improved features "under the hood", in addition to obvious foreground changes; this version has slashed away major functionality that users have come to depend on, and added a confusing alternative GUI suited to phones and tablets which is of no obvious use on a desktop computer. The resultant loss of sales is well-documented on the web. Removing the start button (or rather replacing it with the desktop-toggling button), and indeed removing any obvious way to find programs on your machine, just seems madness. And worse still, I know that technically Windows 8 has several major improvements in key subsystems; but these remain unavailable to me because I can't tolerate the GUI. Life's too short to waste on such a bad GUI for doing any serious work.

Your response was interesting although my original thread came to the same conclusion i.e. sticking with the older version of WMM, 2011, does resolve the problem. Incidentally I still use, on the odd occasion, Version 2.6 (XP version which runs fine on Windows 7) to use the ability to overlay videos - great for fading out/in between 2 videos. The question still remains "Why does Microsoft NOT fix the problem" !!

I was a little puzzled by this problem, too.

Fortunately, I have been an electronics/computing enthusiast since a small boy, and it has become my profession, too, so I got to the bottom of this one.

I created a PAL DVD in 16:9 format from 16:9 photographs using two computers in parallel running Window Live Movie Maker to create slideshow videos which I then merged into a single DVD using Windows DVD Maker under Windows 7. To get maximum clarity, I saved these as WMV video files with an aspect ratio of 1280:720, which is exactly 16:9. This made it easy to see what was wrong.

Of the two computers which created the video files files, one was running Windows Live Movie Maker version 2012 (Build 16.4.3505.0912) under Windows 8.1, and the other was running an older version, version 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) under Windows 7.

Both of the video files appeared to have the same settings, and display correctly under Windows Media Player and the popular VLC video player.

In Windows DVD Maker under Windows 7, the file from the Windows 8 machine showed as being narrower than the file from the Windows 7 machine, and the rendered DVD had the same issue: the file from the Windows 8 machine was squashed horizontally to fit into a 4:3 ratio.

I found that the open-source video analysis program "gspot" was able to diagnose the problem for me. The video codec used by both versions of Windows Live Maker appears to be the same... WMV3 WMP v9 (VC-1 Simple/Main), and the dimensions are both 1280x720 - but there is a difference, which appears to make the difference to Windows DVD Maker. There are parameters called sar, par and dar, which are Storage aspect ratio, Pixel aspect ratio, and Display aspect ratio. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio for an explanation. The video that works correctly only has sar=16:9 defined; the one that fails, from the newer version of Windows Movie Maker, sets sar=16:9, par=1:1, dar=16:9. Note that ALL these are correct, and the problem is just that Windows DVD Maker under Windows 7 misinterprets the fuller set of aspect ratio parameters, and needs fixing by Microsoft developers. The exact mistake is hard to guess, but the meaning of these parameters is well-understood and the developers at Microsoft who have access to both programs should be able to make Windows DVD Maker understand the output from the newer Windows Live Movie Maker, and other programs which use all these parameters.

You can work around the problem using various third-party tools which let you edit these parameters, to remove the par and dar values, and then your videos should work correctly in Windows DVD Maker.

I am rather hoping that, with this information, someone at Microsoft can find and fix the bug. For now, we will have to edit our videos before using them in Windows DVD Maker, or just use the older (2011) version of Windows Live Movie Maker to get videos that work properly.

As a footnote: a Windows 8.1 version of Windows DVD Maker would be good, too, now that the problem that has been making it less than ideal is clear. Having to run it only under Windows 7 is a real nuisance, as I only have a relatively slow laptop with Windows 7.