DVD works fine in Xine; in physical DVD player left/right cut off

Hello,

This is my first attempt at making a DVD, so I'm a little
inexperienced.  But I have quite a bit of experience editing and
encoding video for playback on computers.

Basically, I have a DVD with only a "Main Menu VMGM" and two video
files.  The menu and videos are all ntsc, 720x480 with 16:9 aspect.
My dvdauthor.xml file is attached.  Below I'll show the mencoder
command I used for encoding the VOB files and some info from mplayer
about the VOBs.

Anyway, everything works perfect in xine on my computer.  The problems
start in physical DVD players.  I have two different players and TVs
I'm testing.

Basically, a few pixels are cut-off on the left and right edge of the
screen.  Also, one of the TVs is widescreen and can be set to 16:9
aspect, but still shows the black bars on top and bottom (as if the TV
were set to 4:3 while watching a 16:9 movie).  Other DVDs in this same
player/TV that are 16:9 with the TV set to 16:9, won't show the black
bars.

Also, on one of the DVD players, I can actually zoom out (1/2x zoom)
which allows me to see edges that are cut off -- but, of course, this
isn't that useful because the whole picture becomes really small.  The
other DVD player (like most) only allows zooming in.

My original guess was that for some reason the DVD player thinks the
menu/videos are 4:3 when they are actually 16:9.  That would explain
left/right edges being cut off (4:3 is 704x480, it could be 8 pixels
missing on each side, but hard to say for sure).  It doesn't explain
the wide-screen TV putting the bars on the top and bottom, though.
But I've got aspect="16:9" all over my XML file *and* I'm passing it
in on the command line too, ie:

dvdauthor dvdauthor.xml -v ntsc+16:9+720x480

I'm using dvdauthor 0.6.18.  I read the ChangLog for 0.7.0 and I
didn't see anything in there that would lead me to believe that it
would help.

Here is the mencoder command I'm using to generate the VOBs (my
originals are mp4's: ntsc, 1280x720, 16:9):

mencoder -oac lavc -lameopts fast:preset=standard -ovc lavc -of mpeg
-mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:480,harddup -srate 48000 -af
lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=6400:vstrict=0:keyint=18:trell:mbd=2:precmp=2:subcmp=2:cmp=2:dia=-10:predia=-10:cbp:mv0:vqmin=1:lmin=1:dc=10:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=16/9
-ofps 30000/1001 -o output.vob input.mp4

Which is basically a modified version of the recommend command line
from mencoder docs located here:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-vcd-dvd.html

>From the output of mplayer, I know that my VOBs are definitely marked
with the 16:9 flag (see the "aspect 3" and the last two lines):

Playing christmas2010.vob.
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO:  MPEG2  720x480  (aspect 3)  29.970 fps  9800.0 kbps (1225.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffmpeg2] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-2)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 192.0 kbit/12.50% (ratio: 24000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffac3] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg AC-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12

Is there anything I'm missing?  My OS is Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat
on an AMD64 machine.  I created the menus and dvdauthor.xml using
qdvdauthor.  I'm using everything from the ubuntu package repos.

I tried exploring the generated DVD with PgcEdit, but I don't really
know what to look for.  I don't know enough about DVDs to know what
all that stuff is.

Any ideas?

This is meant to be a Christmas present, so I might end up finding
someone with a Windows box and download some shareware to get the job
done in time.  But I'd really prefer to handle it all my computer, if
possible.

Thanks in advance!
David Snopek.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<dvdauthor dest="/home/dsnopek/data/video/christmas-2010-dvd/dvd/" >
 <vmgm>
  <menus>
   <video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" resolution="720x480" />
   <pgc entry="title" >
    <pre> { if ( g4 gt 0 ) button=g4; 
	   if ( g2 gt 0 )  { 
		if ( g2 eq 1 ) jump titleset 1 menu entry root;
		jump title 1;		}
	} </pre>
    <vob file="/home/dsnopek/temp/dvdauthor//Christmas-2010/Main Menu VMGM_menu.mpg" pause="inf" />
    <button name="01_Button_2" > { g4=1024;  g3=1; jump titleset 1 menu entry root; } </button>
    <button name="02_Button_1" > { g4=2048;  g3=2; jump titleset 1 menu entry root; } </button>
    <post> { g4=button; g2=0; jump vmgm menu 1; } </post>
   </pgc>
  </menus>
 </vmgm>
 <titleset><!-- Titleset 1 // -->
 <menus>
   <pgc entry="root" >
    <pre> {   if ( g3 gt 0 )  {
		if ( g3 eq 1 ) { g3=0; jump title 1  chapter 1; }
		if ( g3 eq 2 ) { g3=0; jump title 2  chapter 1; }
		jump vmgm menu entry title;
		}
	} </pre>
    <post> { g2 = 0; jump vmgm menu entry title; } </post>
   </pgc>
  </menus>
  <titles>
   <video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" resolution="720x480" />
   <audio lang="en" />
   <pgc pause="0" ><!-- Title 1 // -->
    <vob file="/home/dsnopek/data/video/2010-10-09/311_0089-subs.vob" pause="0" chapters="00:00:00.000" />
    <post> { g2 = 0; call vmgm menu entry title; } </post>
   </pgc>
   <pgc pause="0" ><!-- Title 2 // -->
    <vob file="/home/dsnopek/data/video/christmas-2010-dvd/christmas2010.vob" pause="0" chapters="00:00:00.000" />
    <post> { g2 = 0; call vmgm menu entry title; } </post>
   </pgc>
  </titles>
 </titleset>
</dvdauthor>