That is a good workstation laptop that originally had win 8.1. The default Cinematic and Monopoly and all other menus always previews as 16:9 on my desktop when the project is set at 16:9.

If the created dvd menus displays properly as you say then I would not worry about it. You are the first person to report seeing this issue on their computer that I can remember. It is more than likely a video driver issue or screen setting not being exactly 16:9.

Let us know if this helps.

Hi tomasc, many thanks for your quickreply. I have tried all the menus provided, including Cinematic and Monopoly, and they all preview at 4:3. My screen resolution is set at 1920 x 1080, which is exactly 16:9, and I have tried different screen resolutions without success. I have also done some more experimenting, and find that though the output DVD plays ok on my standalone DVD / BluRay player, when played on any of three computers using various reply software, the menu appears in 4:3. It seems that the DVD player is compensating for the 4:3 menu and that the problem is with the output from Power Director. I have also noticed that when played on some player software including the latest version of VLC, the first few seconds of the edited footage stutters badly. This may be a completely unrelated problem however. Everything used to work fine with Adobe Premiere (on the same laptop), but I prefer Power Director and don't want to go back to Premiere, not least because it's very expensive and doesn't appear to do much more than Premiere, at least for my purposes. I could attempt to compensate by making objects (including the text) placed on the menu background narrower to begin with so that they stretch to the desired size in the output but I shouldn't have to do this, and in any case, this wouldn't help if my output DVDs were played on a laptop......

Sorted! As I suspected in the first place, I was being completely dumb!! In the 'Create Disc' section, in Video and Audio Settings, there is an option for video recording format, which was set to 4:3. You would assume it would default to the same as the overall project setings, but obviously it doesn't. I had been in that tab numerous times and not noticed it - perhaps it's my age..... Anyway thanks to anyone who has been looking at this.

Quote: Sorted! As I suspected in the first place, I was being completely dumb!! In the 'Create Disc' section, in Video and Audio Settings, there is an option for video recording format, which was set to 4:3.

You are not as dumb as you think. You actually passed the gate to a hidden gem to access programming not intended for users that I discovered a few weeks ago.

Remember when a standalone dvr can record 1 hour, 2 hour, 4 hour, and 6 or 8 hour on a single dvr-r or dvd-rw. Well PD14 can do the same and make up to a 7 hour dvd with a 16:9 aspect ratio that will play in standalone dvd and BD players just as you have found. Simply select SP or LP. The only player that did not do well is vlc.

Look at the last thread of this post on how to do it: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/48895.page . If is because of users like you with questions that led me to find this hidden gem for 16:9 dvd users.

Also, there it is another "gem".
Audio by default is set to LPCM. That can be set to DolbyDigital 2ch and save some precious disc space (to be filled with higher quality video of course).