Silverbirch - If the Aspect Ratio of your video clips is 16:9 - which recent cameras doing HD-Low or HD-Hi use (the VGA or 640 x 480 setting option will be at 4:3 AR) - you don't need to "clip" the sides to make the video 4:3.
> Of course, as T6 says, that's an option. In Sydney we've had "parallel" FTA broadcasts of Digital and Analogue TV since 2002. If you don't have a widescreen TV, you can select on the Set-Top Box which you want. In analogue a 4:3 picture fills the screen - and there's no 16:9 transmission. In Digital, the 4:3 movies don't fill the screen - click the AR button on the Remote to fill the screen at 4:3 Digital.
> If the movie is 16:9 - it displays as "letterboxed" on a std TV - you see the full width in 16:9 AR - but there are "black bars" above and below.
> You can duplicate that effect with "HD" video from cameras. I have a camera which does 1280 x 720 .mp4 video. To make Std DVDs from that, it has to be converted to 720 x 400, and the black-bars added top and bottom - to make the working AR 4:3.
> Note that in PAL areas Std TV is 720 x 576 - and in NTSC areas, it's 720 x 480. So the black bars added must make the "total vertical" into 480 for NTSC - add 40 lines top and bottom - and for PAL's 576, add 88 top and bottom. Of course - if your vertical from camera is different - so must the bars be.
> If you use Avidemux you can do the DVD conversion [DVD(lavc) in the Video list] - and add the bars at the same time. Use "2-Pass -Average Bitrate" - under "Configure" to retain best quality.
> The output is *.mpeg files. Make sure to check Format at bottom left as "MPEG-PS (A+V)"
> Under Audio - Filters, Check Resampling to 48,000Hz if the original Audio wasn't. The DVD disk structure needs Audio at 48,000. Use AC3 unless you know the TV-Player has problems with that. If so, use AAC.
> If you do the above to all of your from-camera clips before using a video-editor - such as Kdenlive - they'll all be consistent and easy to use.
> With Kdenlive it will render your constructed video to DVD-output, and create the VOBs and *.ifos, etc. K3b is happy with Kdenlive's output for burning TV-Player compatible DVDs.
> Any questions, Post back...
Regards, Dave.