I want widescreen!!! Please help!!!!

[Chumley]

This is driving me crazy!

I've burned a VCD from an mpg file using Nero. It is supposed to be in widescreen. When I put the VCD in my computer and use Media Player to view it, it is exactly as it should be... widescreen with black bars at the top and bottom. But when I put it in my Pioneer DV-333 player and view it on my Panasonic 4:3 television, it STRETCHES the image out to fill the screen. How can I stop this? I want my black bars!

[Baldrick]

maybe it is an "anormophic" vcd....open the vcd mpg with virtualdub or tmpgenc, is it fullscreen then?

[Chumley]

Yes, according to the readme that came with the VCD mpg, it is anamorphic. But, I play anamorphic DVDs on my player all the time and have never had this happen. This is the first VCD I've tried. Is there anything I can do to make it look normal?

[ember]

An anamorphic film should be "stretched" simply change your WS tv to Cinema mode.

[Chumley]

But I don't have a WS TV. I have a fullscreen TV. I want to see the VCD with black bars, not stretched out to fill the screen.

[SupaCoopa]

Chumley, I think I know what you mean. You want a VCD that will act like an anamorphic DVD, that is play full screen on a 16:9 TV and with black bars on a 4:3 TV. Right?
Well, I'm not sure whether VCD supports the anamorphic function, can anybody help? If not, maybe SVCDs can be anamorphic? I'm interested on this subject, I've been thinking about trying to make an anamorphic (S)VCD but never got down to it. It would be cool if it's possible...
Have you encoded the MPG with the 16:9 (625 Lines) Aspect Ratio under "Video" ( not "Advanced-Source" ) in TMPEG?

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SupaCoopa on 2001-10-15 03:30:28 ]</font>

[borndevil]

Anamorphing video is not recognized in VCD.
This means that player can't see the bit that set-up the 16/9 ratio in output.
You can however put your TV in wide-screen mode, that's the only way.
Otherwise you must use SVCD and pray your player can recognize the bit of 16/9 ratio (if not try DVD2SVCD)

[nightwing7]

what is the definition of anamorphic, i still havent figured it out!

[snowmoon]

Anomorphic just means that the video resolution 352x240 does not match it's aspect ratio 16:9.

The common usage is anamorphic DVD's. This means that the DVD contails 720x480 mpeg-2 at an aspect ratio of 16:9.

Pioneers are good at playing standards complaint VCD and SVCD, but they will not play wide screen materal. I have tried several times in the past to do that with SVCD's.

[eatin sammiches for lunch]

sounds like reencoding is a must for u bud

[ember]

You could use a transceiver setup from PC to TV or, if your graphics card permits, S-video connection to your tv. Use tvtools to adjust the aspect ratio displayed.

[SupaCoopa]

Snowmoon, could you give some info on how you tried to create widescreen (S)VCDs and what exactly went wrong with them? Also what Pioneer model do you have? Have you correctly set up the player? I quess you have but I have to ask.

I would guess that if you set the "Video Aspect Ratio" in TMPEG to 16:9 it would encode the video so that it is horizontally squeezed (or vertically streched). Then when the player starts playing this video and "sees" it's 16:9 (this is where things could go wrong) it would either
a) Play the video fullscreen if you have a widescreen TV
b) Play the video in letterbox (black bars up/down) if you have a normal TV

Well, these are just speculations, it's how DVDs work. I am a true believer in Pioneer, I still think if (S)VCDs could be anamorphic Pioneers would play them right!

[snowmoon]

Using either TMPGenc, LSX, or CCE to creat compliant 16:9 SBCD stream. I then burned them with nero ( I should give vcdimager a try ) and played them. I have a pioneer DV-333, but I beleieve the logic in most of the ( 525,333,242,434) are almost identical.

The pioneer appears to have a much more simple logic.

If cd media it's (s)vcd and playback fullscreen. If you have a WS TV it might work.

I would try using vcdimager, but it appears the pioneers are brain dead with aspect ratios.

[mikk]

if u have a 4:3 TV and everything looks tall and thin, the source must be anamorphic. To correctly display the image with out everything looking weird, there is a solution.

Many new 4:3 TVs have a mode for anamorphic video. This will make the TV scan a smaller part of the screen. The picture then becomes letterboxed and everything will be in the correct proportions. This will look cool too because the resolution is higher!

If your TV doesn't have this feature, all is not lost. U can still do the same thing manually. If your TV has a sophisticated on-screen diplay (almost every TV has one these days) u should be able to enter service mode and change the vertical size. You TV manual probably won't tell u how to get into service mode. You probably need to press certain buttons on the remote in a certain order or enter a code in the menu. Ask your TV manufacturer or a serviceperson how to get into service mode for your particular TV.

Older TVs might not have a service mode. The solution for these TVs is to open the TV and adjust a potentiometer to change the vertical size of the picture. !!!I think u shouldn't do this because u could kill yourself with the HUGE voltages inside TV sets!!!

hope i helped
mikk