Hi Jeff:

Thank you for attempting to help me, however that did not solve the problem.

I shoot with a SONY PD170, which can shoot in true widescreen (16:9) but not in HD...it's still SD. Working within Adobe Premiere CS4, the footage on my timeline (widescreen sequence) looks fine...things are in proprtion and nothing is distorted. However, when I export to Encore, the resulting DVD is distorted...the people are elongated. It seems reasonable to assume that Adobe Premiere would export a widescreen timeline as a widescreen video, so the problem should lie within Encore. But I have no idea what the solution might be.

BTW, there was no option for "Conform to SD Widescreen." When I select an avi, and "Interpret Footage," the PAR button defaults to "Use Pixel Aspect Ratio from File: D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2121)."

I will try some of the options available under the "Conform to" button (rather than the "Use Pixel Aspect Ratio from File" button), however as I said, "Conform to SD Widescreen" is not listed under that button as an available option.

Thanks again.

Good questions.

I'm viewing the DVD on a widescreen TV.

I never considered the setup of the DVD player as a possible factor. I will have to dig out the manual and check this.

Thanks.

That did the trick. Many thanks.

OK, I didn't want to get into this because it's going to make me sound

stupid...but since you asked:

I thought the TV I was using to view the DVD was a widescreen TV. It has a

physical appearance which would lead one to believe this. I know...how

could anyone not tell the difference? Well I couldn't, until I looked the

model up online and saw that the PAR was listed as 4:3. In my defense I

will say that I rarely use this particular TV (but I still feel pretty

stupid).

Anyway, the DVD player was set for a PAR of 16:9, which would have worked

just fine if the TV had in fact been widescreen, but since the TV was 4:3,

it scrunched the people up to look unnaturally tall and thin. When I

changed the PAR to 4:3 letterbox, the distortion disappeared. When I saw

this I thought "Oh, it must not be a widescreen TV," because why else would

switching to any type of 4:3 solve the problem?

Your suggestion pointed me in the right direction. I did not realize that I

had to set the PAR on the DVD player itself. I was certain the problem had

to be something in Encore.

Thank you.