Please forgive me if my problem has been solved here somewhere. I've been doing an awful lot of reading, both here and elsewhere, and I still can't figure out where I'm going wrong and why.

Here's my workflow: I edit 1080p30 AVCHD files that came from an HMC40 or GH1 in Premiere Pro CS5, using the correct sequence settings. When I'm done editing the project, I want to produce both a widescreen DVD and a Blu-ray from the same sequence. I export the sequence to Encore CS5 using Adobe Dynamic Link. I make all my menus, etc., in Encore and the project looks great, not changing any of the project settings in Encore -- because none of them seem to apply to my problem.

However, when I burn the final DVD, it is letterboxed on both SD TV's and HD TV's. It's not a setting on the DVD player, as I've played other widescreen DVD's and they fill the screen on HD TV's.

All I can figure is that I'm missing a setting somewhere. I would really like to continue using ADL instead of doing a lot of rendering if possible.

Thanks!

When you say "letterboxed", do you mean that there are black pillars on the left and right of the screen? If so, how wide are the black pillars? Is the image distorted, i.e. does it look stretched?

If there are 8 pixels pillars on each side of the frame, this a normal outcome of downsizing HD to SD widescreen, maintaining the correct dimensions of the image. This has been much discussed here. You can search for "new PARS" or something like that. The problem is that the shape of SD Widescreen is not exactly the same as HD 16:9.

The solution is to trim a few pixels off the top and bottom of the HD file when you encode, but I don't think that you can do this with a dynamic link.

The BluRay will not have this problem, as there is no downsizing.

The letterboxing appears at the top and bottom of the screen. The black areas are larger on an SD TV than on an HD TV, and the image looks normal either way (not stretched).

You need to select you menus to be 16:9 if you want them to be 16:9. You need to open a menu, and in properties change from 4:3 (default) to 16:9. Also, make sure that your dynamic link sequences are set to 16:9 as well - click on them in the project window and check the properties panel.

Thanks Bart.

I just checked, and everything is set to 16x9.

Very strange. In such case I would try outputting the linked sequences to proper files (m2v, wav), and importing the files. I know it's not what you wanted, but perhaps there is some kind of glitch in Encore.

You can also try to see if the encoding template you're using has proper aspect ratio as well, especially if you're downconverting.

I make two different projects one for DVD and one for BD.
Bit more work but no glitches.