How to export a DVD with nonstandard video format?

You can export a DVD with nonstandard video format by setting the "Allow export with nonstandard DVD format" on the DVD Option page.

- open the Options window from the Tools menu on the Taskbar, or using the keyboard shortcut by pressing F10

- switch to the DVD page - check the "Allow export with nonstandard DVD format" line

- press OK to confirm the change and close the Options window.

This option will instruct the editor to export the video without re-encoding even when the video format is not strictly conform to the DVD standard.

One of the main usages of this non standard option is to export video with an image resolution that is not listed in the DVD standard.

According to the DVD standard, the list of video resolutions are 720 x 480, 704 x 480, 352 x 480, 352 x 240 for NTSC, and 720 x 576, 704 x 576, 352 x 576, 352 x 288 for PAL.

However, this is unnecessarily over restrictive, since there are wide spread uses of other image formats, and the additional image size conversion will gain nothing but video quality degradation.

Furthermore, we have tested a number of DVD players from more than 10 manufacturers, with one exception, all of which played DVD's made of nonstandard image size at 480 x 480 (NTSC) and 480 x 576 (PAL).

Another most common case of non standard video format is about the video bit rate limit.

Again, according to the DVD standard, the maximum video bit rate is about 9,802,000 bits per second.

This maximum video bit rate is violated in many cases when MPEG-2 video is digitally broadcasted, where for some reason the video bit rate was set to an artificially high value, much higher than the actual video data rate.

When you start an export job, the DVD editor will check the video format against the DVD standard limits explained above. If it found any violation, it will display a warning message similar to the one shown below.

Lastly, please note that with the "Allow export with nonstandard DVD format" option checked, the DVD maker will export a DVD with MPEG video at a HDTV resolution, even though almost all standard DVD players are incapable of its decoding.