overscanning.. help?

[only_emo_kid]

Alright, ill take a divx video file to convert to mpeg2 to burn to dvd.. and i'll choose full screen, and it cuts some of the edges off.. I'd rather not do all my converstions with 352x480 because its like widescreen with letterbox borders =\ anyways any tips?


i've used dvdsanta and thats the only thing thats given me results with video playback being good and audio on sync. Thx

[celtic_druid]

You need to pad the edges of the video, so that the padding is removed by the overscan and not the actual image. eg. 704 pixles wide padded to 720

[junkmalle]

You'll need much more padding than that -- more like 30 to 60 pixels on each edge. And every TV overscans by a different amount so don't bother getting it "perfect" for your current TV. It will be different on your next.

[lordsmurf]

Hint: the width of the top and bottom is half the width of the sides.

[only_emo_kid]

i don't understand how to do that tho?

[FulciLives]

Use FitCD which will allow you to account for the overscan.

Try it and see

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[monzie]

Alright, ill take a divx video file to convert to mpeg2 to burn to dvd.. and i'll choose full screen, and it cuts some of the edges off.. I'd rather not do all my converstions with 352x480 because its like widescreen with letterbox borders =\ anyways any tips?


i've used dvdsanta and thats the only thing thats given me results with video playback being good and audio on sync. Thx

Hold on, is your avi 4:3 to start or is it 1.77, 1.85 or 2.35:1?

You cant have fullscreen 'NO BORDERS' unless your source is 4:3 (1.33:1) to start....any other method will either add borders top and bottom, or SEVERELY CROP the video or throw out the DAR.

What is the AR of your avi? and its length in time?

[only_emo_kid]

Alright, ill take a divx video file to convert to mpeg2 to burn to dvd.. and i'll choose full screen, and it cuts some of the edges off.. I'd rather not do all my converstions with 352x480 because its like widescreen with letterbox borders =\ anyways any tips?


i've used dvdsanta and thats the only thing thats given me results with video playback being good and audio on sync. Thx

Hold on, is your avi 4:3 to start or is it 1.77, 1.85 or 2.35:1?

You cant have fullscreen 'NO BORDERS' unless your source is 4:3 (1.33:1) to start....any other method will either add borders top and bottom, or SEVERELY CROP the video or throw out the DAR.

What is the AR of your avi? and its length in time?

how can i find out if its 4:3 or whut? any program and i'll get u specs

[only_emo_kid]

Use FitCD which will allow you to account for the overscan.

Try it and see

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

how do u use it? i can't figure it out exacty.. sorry for being a newb

[only_emo_kid]

You need to pad the edges of the video, so that the padding is removed by the overscan and not the actual image. eg. 704 pixles wide padded to 720

how do i pad?

[celtic_druid]

Fit CD does it for you. Default setting is I think 2 blocks.

[FulciLives]

Fit CD does it for you. Default setting is I think 2 blocks.

Yes 2 blocks is good enough ... going to 3 blocks is a bit overkill.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[only_emo_kid]

with fitcd I can't figure out how it starts? wtf am i to press. sorry for being dumb

[FulciLives]

Maybe you need to look into another hobby if you can't even get the freaking program to start.

*sigh*

- John "FuciLives" Coleman

[only_emo_kid]

I mean, I don't understand the way its supposed to resize my video? whut button do I press? because all i've seen is to make scripts or something?

is it because i don't have the avisynth directory or something?

[celtic_druid]

Well it generates AVISynth scripts, that is how the resizing/padding is done. They won't work without AVISynth installed, however I would think that FitCD would still work without it.

[only_emo_kid]

alright kool.. i load those scripts into tmpg? and whut do i use to choose for the audio? the original file? Thx

[junkmalle]

alright kool.. i load those scripts into tmpg? and whut do i use to choose for the audio? the original file? Thx

You can do all the resizing and padding from within tmpgenc. Just use go to Settings -> Advanced, in the "Video Arrange Method" pulldown choose "Center (custom size)" and set the X and Y dimensions to the size you want.

[only_emo_kid]

..alright, may I ask whut the best size is to use if i want full screen on my tv? without it overscanning?

[only_emo_kid]

could my dvd player be casuing the overscanning?

[celtic_druid]

AVISynth tends to be a fair bit faster than TMPGEnc for resizing, etc.

The problem is with your TV and cathod-ray TV's in general.

[jimmalenko]

I think someone needs to point the man to a guide or something, or hold his hand

[lordsmurf]

You know, I figured this out years ago on my own, in TMPGENC, simply by playing with the "clip frame" filter and adjusting the "video arrange method" (in "video source settings" area) to match my source.

I figured it out in about 5 minutes at most.

Why does everybody always need a guide?

To keep 4:3, use a "keep aspect ratio" arrange method in the clip filter. You can also punch in a custom size. Break out some pencil/paper and calculator.

I mean, this thing previews in realtime. Punch in some numbers, shift some knobs, and watch it work. This is so simple.



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My most recent experience:

I had a rare trailer (public domain!) that I downloaded some days back. It was a small quicktime, so I did not want to increase the size too much (nor fill the screen). I wanted to put on a VCD. Source was 160x120. Output for VCD is 352x240. I wanted to keep the video smaller than fullscreen (not blow it up too much), but maintain 4:3 on it. Leaving it 160x120 on a 352x240 palette would have stretched it horizontally. So I needed to slim the sides down.

I also decided to make it 1.5 times bigger than 160x120 onscreen. I went for 240x180, still under 352x240. So somewhat fullscreen, but not too big, and still black borders on all sides.

The differences between 352x240 and 320x240 (true 4:3 aspect) is 1.1 (352 divided by 320). I multiplied the decided horizontal size of 240x180 by 1.1. 240 became 264. My custom video size was centered as 264x180 inside the 352x240 frame.

I encoded, and have watched the trailer on tv, at the smaller-than-screen custom size I chose, and WITHOUT ruining the 4:3 aspect ratio.

Math and experiment, math and experiment. I guess algebra finally did find a way to make itself useful, though only as a day-one basic equation.

[FulciLives]

This is from the FitCD website:

FitCD v1.2.4
=========================
by shh
email: shh(at)sysh.de
homepage: http://shh.sysh.de


Info:
======
This is a tool that helps you calculate the exact image-size and
bitrates of a VCD or SVCD.
It includes a resizing calculator for optimal (macro)block-usage in
MPEGs. You can also export a sample script for use with avisynth.
FitCD is very accurate at calculating bitrates and optimal resizing.
No known tool can compete with its features, yet, which have grown
since 3 years.

FitCD is released as fully functional freeware-version with
NO WARRANTY and is freely usable.
Feel free to send suggestions and bug reports. Do not mail me about
DVD-, (S)VCD-, MPEG-, program- or programming-problems!
Keep your computer free from email-worms! If you don't want to,
please delete my email-address from your address book.


HowTo:
=======
This program is intended to fill your discs to its edge.
Many of of the options are fine in the default-position and can be left
untouched. Don't get lost with the many options and info!
Try the quick-hints: Just position the mouse-cursor over something and
wait for the hints to pop-up.
0. Copy all necessary avisynth-plugins in the plugin-directory.
FitCD will automatically create a directory in the install-directory
of avisynth.
For proper decoding of old and new D2V-projects, copy the MPEG2Dec3dg.dll
and DGDecode.dll in the plugin-directory.
1. Load a source file.
(Press the Source-Button under MPEG-Resizing)
Most of the source-values are detected and automatically set now:
- PAL/NTSC
- frames, seconds, frame-rate
- anamorphic-flag
- resolution and -aspect
2. Change and tune some options. For example
- change the size of your destination CD
- change the number of CDs you want to use
- change destination-resolution
- change authoring-program
- tune the authoring to the values, you want to set later in your
authoring-program, e.g. set more menu-pictures, ...
- tune resizing & cropping
- change the film-pixel and borders to correct values of your
source. That will enhance the cropping & resizing greatly.
- change the resizing-mode
- add manual avisynth-options
...
3. Note the calculated bitrate(s) to use it in your MPEG-encoder and
save the avisynth-script to use it as a source-file (with proper
resizing already done) in your encoder.
4. If you want to use FitCD's avisynth-scripts, make sure, you have
correctly installed avisynth. Copy all plugins into the directory
FitCD creates if necessary.
This feature is supported in avisynth since avisynth v2.0.4 and is
necessary for FitCD's scripts to function properly.


Options & Shown Values:
========================
Window-Moving:
For easier window-moving, just click (and hold the button) somewhere
in the window and move around. The window also pops to the borders of
your workspace, for easier positioning.

Stream & Authoring:
Set your video-length. The framerate is the rate of the encoded video.
Set the kbps (=1000bps) of your audio-tracks. If you don't want a
second audio-track, set it's bitrate to 0kbps.
If you want to include subtitles: Enter the number of BMPs. FitCD
will try to estimate the BMP-sizes on your harddisk.
For more accurate calculation of the multiplexing (and so the resulting
bitrate), please enter the GOP-length you want to encode and if you
want to use scene-detection.
At Multiplexing, choose the multiplexing(-program) you'd like to use.
The multiplexers have different overhead and some produce better streams
for *your* DVD-Player, some not. You can also enter, if you want to
hack some additional matrices in the stream with ReStream.
Sequence-header aligning and SVCD scan offsets (which are only optional
with some multiplexers) are not necessary for proper playback. Although
the SVCD-standard requires SVCD scan offsets and sequence-header
aligning every access-point-sector (= chapter jump-in), not using them
can save you many unnecessary overhead.
At Authoring, choose your program that authors your video-discs. They
all have quite different overhead, what varies the necessary bitrate
of your video to fill your discs. You can also enter the number of
Menu-pictures you'd like to add, and some extra data, you want to save
to your discs.
Enter number of discs you want to use for the encoded video, and also
their size.
Then look at the xxxx-kbps value for the video. That’s the value your
encoder should match exactly, the final average bitrate of your video.

MPEG Resizing:
Load a source-file to let FitCD detect several options (including
anamorphic-flag, resolution, aspect, PAL/NTSC ...)
Afterwards, you can some tune options of your source, if they weren't
detected correctly.
With the "> RGB"-box you can ensure that the codec provides RGB-video.
This helps with some codecs, which provide broken YUY2 or YV12. To
change the forced colorspace right-click on the check-box. You can also
use other forced colorspaces, by editing the line behind
ForcedCodecColorspace under [Resolution] of the ini-file.
Enter the (black) borders around film. This area is cut away, when you
rezize your video. The other area is retained.
ITU-R BT.601-4 option: This is a sad story. Many sources (especially
DVDs don't take care for the correct pixel-aspect, defined in this
standard. Instead of calculating with correct TV-pixel-forms
(PAL:117/128 and NTSC:79/72) the producers use some 'generic-aspects'
4:3 or 16:9 ... These generic-aspects do not have the correct aspect-
ratio on your TV-set! Note that many guides upon aspect-ratios are
wrong. If you're interested in more about that, read:
http://www.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/conversion/
Conclusion: If the source has correct aspect: check the ITU-R BT.601-4
box. If you uncheck the box, a 'generic-pixel-aspect' of PAL:45/48 and
NTSC:9/8 is used which leads to e.g. exact 1.33333.
Next to the resizing-size there are some compression values according
to the final film. A compression of ~1:36 generally means "very good
quality", ~1:40 means "good quality". Higher compression-ratios than
1:42 are not recommended and can look good, if you do some major
filtering of the video. Note that interlacing or much noise or motion
in films each need about 25% more bitrate.
FitCD will then resize and crop by your favourite method:
no cropping: what it means: the coded film pixel are not cropped. If
you resize then this will cause aspect-ratio error of the
destination. If you don't resize (choose "no resizing" at
the avisynth-options) the borders are cut away and added
again. This produces a proper blackened overscan-area.
accurate: The calculator tries to retain as many source-pixels as
possible with a correct aspect-ratio. Since a correct aspect-
ratio is the law, cropping is often necessary.
max.height: This tries to retain the entire coded pixel in Y.
max.width: This tries to retain the entire coded pixel in X.
The cropping-calculator sets an optimal cropping-range for the
destination-size (=resizing-size). Set the round-sliders as you see fit.
If you want to crop more just increase the border-area. If you think
FitCD is cropping too much of your source, try to increase the
CodedFilmPixel-Y-size or choose another method.
If you want manual resizing: Enter a custom destination-y-value.
To optimize encoding, set the round-bar. The higher you set it, the more
optimized the destination-size will be, because the sizes are chosen,
not to waste (macro)blocks.
For interlaced-sources check the Interlaced-box. This will produces
accurate (field-wise) resizing and tries to retain the field-order.
If you want more or less black borders encoded (which aren't visible on
TV because of overscan), adjust the 'Blocks TV-overscan'-value.
If you want to convert your MPEG-TV-format, do a PAL<->NTSC picture
conversion, (un)set the PAL-format box according to your needs.

AviSynth Script:
Choose your favourite resizing-method. (Some are faster, some better)
"No crop&resizing" let's you do all other things but skips the cropping
and resizing of the source. "No resizing" just skips rezizing what's good
if you want to pad overscan-area black, but don't want to resize.
Adjusting the position-slider (centered, (macro)block aligned), you
can choose the vertical position of the destination film-pixel to the
resolution. If you choose macroblock aligning for example, the film-
position is being moved up (if necessary) so that the film-pixel start
at a new macroblock-slice. This can enhance encoding efficiency.
If you have bottom-field-first (bff) videos like DV-AVIs from your
camcorder, you can check the bff->tff box to convert it to a top-field-
first video.
If you want to use the avisynth-script in other programs like TMPGEnc,
or want to encapsulate it in a VFAPI-frameserver-AVI, check the
RGB-output-box, to ensure that programs get a proper color-space. For
YV12-input it's probably faster to convert to YUY2.

If you use the CCE with Athlon-CPUs, you might want to check the CCE-
fix-box. This prevents the CCE from crashing when you drag the scripts
into it.
Note, that the avisynth-script is intended to be a SAMPLE. The AviSynth-
language is much to powerful to cover all options. Just play with them:
Type some new/additional options and/or correct the sample, then save
the script. For more info go to: http://www.avisynth.org/


Additional Options not covered by the GUI:
===========================================
Some options are not covered by the GUI, because they need to be
adjusted only once, and would just overload the GUI.
For changing this options just edit the FitCD.ini with a text-editor.
- Enter your player's streamrate-capabilities:
To show correct min/max values matching your DVD-player's
capabilities, change the values PlayerRateSVCDMin &
PlayerRateSVCDMax [kbps] under [Global] in the ini-file.
Default is 1x & 2x CD-speed (1394 and 2788).
- Change the safety-value:
To adjust the blocks, which are left free of your discs, change the
Safety value under [Image]. Increasing can be necessary, if your
encoder isn't good at holding the given bitrates.
- Change the safety-value:
To adjust the blocks, which are left free of your discs, change the
Safety value under [Image]. Increasing can be necessary, if your
encoder isn't good at holding the given bitrates.
- Some default-lines of the avisynth-script:
Under [AVSscript] change the string after WorkingDir, to set a default
path for plugins or video-files.
Under [AVSscript] change the LoadPlugin* strings to load some plugins
at the beginning of the script. Some people prefer that more than using
a plugin-directory.
- If you don't like FitCD to get exteded infos from the source, like it's
colorspace of the source, you might want to switch it off by setting
the value GetExtendedSrcInfo to 0.
This might come handy, if you like to open faulty scripts in FitCD, but
want to process them with the correct resolution etc.


Recommendations (just a few important ones):
=============================================
1. Don't use SVCD scan offsets in a SVCD stream. No known firmware
and/or MPEG-decoder-chip even parses this extra overhead.
2. Don't use sequence-header aligning. No problems are known if you
leave this overhead out.
3. Crop/resize to even-resolutions (round:2) to let the MMX-acceleration
kick in. Slightly aspect-ratio violations aren't visible for the
end-user. If you use YUY2 and YV12 colorspaces round:4 might be
necessary.
4. Use TV-overscan borders, because nearly no one is able to see the
overscan-area on TV. You can't see this additional border-info when
watching a DVD, either. It just vanishes somewhere in your TV-set.
Do not encode what you can't see!
This can significantly enhance quality, because more bandwidth is
available for the visible blocks of Film-resolution.
5. Set the round-slider of "Resize" to 16 to optimize macroblock-usage.
Then you resize to resolutions of which the macroblocks (=16x16pixel)
are filled fully. This enhances encoding quality and speed.
Also use the positioning-slider at the avisynth-script to align the
video to the (macro)blocks.
Ensure, that no denoiser or the weired "upper-field-first"-option of
the CCE destroys your block-optimizing.
6. Always use the newest versions of avisynth. Since avisynth is still
being enhanced, no one knows what bugs occur and get fixed. Also the
processing-speed of avisynth steadily gets improved.
7. If you transcode MPEGs, use the mpeg2dec*.dll in conjunction with a
*.d2v project-file from DVD2AVI. Or use the new DGDecode suite by D.G.
This significantly enhances encoding speed if the encoder can handle
YUY2 as input (because the YUV->RGB, RGB->YUV conversation isn't
necessary anymore).

I hope that helps.

FitCD is just one of those programs you have to "play around with" in order to figure it out ... but it ain't hard after playing with it for a bit.

Also you don't have to use AviSynth if you are using it with TMPGEnc Plus. Look at the script and use the numbers there in TMPGEnc Plus using the CENTER (CUSTOM SIZE) option for the VIDEO ARRANGE METHOD.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jimmalenko]

Some people seem a little apprehensive about experimenting by trial and error, but anyone who's been around long enough knows that the best way to learn something is to actually try it, or read the readme file.

It's just my observation of this thread FWIW

[only_emo_kid]

I don't exactly need a guide, just everytime I resize something.. it doesn't seem to really resize it.. oh well

[FulciLives]

I don't exactly need a guide, just everytime I resize something.. it doesn't seem to really resize it.. oh well

Dude.

Please.

You're killing me here. I feel like I should be beating my head against a frickin' wall.

I can't take much more of this but "oh well" sounds like you are giving up.

This is like a child giving up on learning to tie his shoes.

Don't be silly now. Don't give up.

Did you read the stuff above that I posted?

You do realize that FitCD does not change the original video file in any way, shape, or form. It gives you the correct values to resize it via AviSynth or by matching said values inside TMPGEnc Plus.

You need to play with it a bit more and if you still don't understand then you need to ask a VERY specific question regarding the particular specific aspect that you don't understand.

Plus if you give up now I'll have to hurt you! :P

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[only_emo_kid]

I don't exactly need a guide, just everytime I resize something.. it doesn't seem to really resize it.. oh well

Dude.

Please.

You're killing me here. I feel like I should be beating my head against a frickin' wall.

I can't take much more of this but "oh well" sounds like you are giving up.

This is like a child giving up on learning to tie his shoes.

Don't be silly now. Don't give up.

Did you read the stuff above that I posted?

You do realize that FitCD does not change the original video file in any way, shape, or form. It gives you the correct values to resize it via AviSynth or by matching said values inside TMPGEnc Plus.

You need to play with it a bit more and if you still don't understand then you need to ask a VERY specific question regarding the particular specific aspect that you don't understand.

Plus if you give up now I'll have to hurt you! :P

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

no, wasn't talking to you.. I think it was lordsmurf who said do we always need a guide or something? I'll just stick to dvdsanta with teh overscanning I guess.. because someone also said somthing about tvs that can cause it too.. IDK? lol Thanks for your help tho, maybe i'll get it right sometime :P

[junkmalle]

Old analog TV components couldn't precisely size and center an image (not to mention that originally TV's had round picture tubes). Even if you adjusted one of those old TVs so that the picture exactly fit the screen -- you would find that as the components warmed up or cooled off the picture would change size and move around.

So TVs were designed to overscan. They enlarge the picture so that the edges of the image are never visible. It was considered better to lose an variable, but small, amount of picture at the edges than to have a visible black border the moved unpredictably.

I think this has also become a matter of marketing. When the typical consumer goes into a TV store and sees two TVs with identical size screens, but one has a bigger picture (ie, it overscans more) they may be more likely to pick the "bigger" one.

[monzie]

Yep agree with everyone about GUIDES.

A GUIDE is PURELY a GUIDE.....no more no less.......the REAL way is to FIGURE it out yourself....(maybe using a GUIDE as a point of referenece ONLY)...we all do things differently and probably prefer 'our own' way to anyone elses but that is not to say anyone else's method is wrong......holding someones hand is pointless as you need to become comfortable with 'your own' method(s).

There is no DEFINITIVE guide.

Why on earth people are scared of playing around with settings and encoding a couple of minutes of vid (or audio) is beyond me, its the only way you ever figure out anything....and lets face it more and more people are asking for INSTANT SOLUTION (best settings, best encoder, best res, best audio rate etc) but cant be arsed to TRY ANYTHING themselves.