Escapade 2005 vid DVDs report

What with one thing and another, I did not go to Escapade. I need an 'I sent my vid to Escapade and all I got was this lousy icon' icon. Except that it wouldn't be true, because
a) many people wrote con and vid reports that I pounced upon gleefully, and
b) others told me something of the crowd reactions, bless them, and
c) I got contributor's copies of the Escapade dvds! Yay!

So I had a vidshow in my own living room, without squeeing fellow fen but with my stripey fleece blanket for company, and I've typed up my thoughts about the vids below.

Summary: when the Escapade vid dvds are offered for sale at escapade_con, and I do hope they will be, I think you should buy them.

Aspect ratio questions
Some, but not all, vids with movie source on this set look wrong on my PAL TV, and I haven't seen anyone else mention it. By 'wrong' I mean that they have the wrong aspect ratio for my TV, and the picture gets stretched vertically. I know that movie source, at least widescreen DVD source, has a different aspect ratio than the 4:3 of TV, and I imagine a vid DVD can only be burned in one aspect ratio - is that why? Or is it something to do with PAL versus NTSC? Would this be solved by cropping/resizing a movie source vid until it’s 4:3 ratio? I really want to know, as I’m working with widescreen movie source myself at the moment. (Maybe that’s why the whole aspect ratio thing is so noticeable to me, and everybody else is going “What are you on about, ya freak?” *g*)
I noted down which vids on the Escapade disc had this problem and which didn’t, and I added that here because I imagine some of the vidders might want to know too.

( Escapade 2005 DVDs, disc one )

( Disc two )