Auto cropping by standalone DVD players?

[nitestrm]

Made my first VCD. Plays fine on the computer, and plays on my Panasonic DVD player. But on the DVD player it crops out the picture, cutting off some of the content. The original video is 640x480 and I use MegaPeg to convert into the format, and use Nero to burn the vcd. Has anyone had this cropping problem before? And does anyone know how to fix it?

-NS

[KingJohn]

At a guess its your TV that is cropping off the picture not the DVD player, either that or you converted the mpeg to be full screen.

When you convert to VCD in programs like TMPGEnc you have an option to select "Full screen keep aspect ratio" this may produce borders, but if you try to use another aspect ratio to remove those borders, you will also loose part of the picture.

A VCD is
Video-CD PAL (MPEG-1 352x288 25fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps)
or
Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps)

[nitestrm]

I was beginning to wonder if it was the TV.. its fairly new, but its not a digital one. I'll check the settings again on the megapeg to make sure its not full screen. Thanks for your help.

-NS

[Mirror_Image]

If it looks like the cropping is uniform on all 4 sides, then do a search on this board for:

overscan

[KingJohn]

I was beginning to wonder if it was the TV.. its fairly new, but its not a digital one. I'll check the settings again on the megapeg to make sure its not full screen. Thanks for your help.

-NS

I think you converted without realizing what was happening, if you use the preview's in programs that convert (Like TMPGEnc) you should see the aspect ratio.

[Digitizer]

It still could be the TV. TV's cut around 10% of the picture on the sides. Sometimes even more. That's why you have to allow for it when, say, creating your own videos. If the cutting is too severe, then it must be something else. Computer screens don't do that, by the way.

[nitestrm]

I think it is overscan. I'm using Premiere 5.1, and just shrunk it a little bit.. 95% wasn't enough, but 90% was too much, so I figure I'll get it between there and it should be alright. I'll just keep the overscan in mind the next time I shoot some video. Thanks for the all help.

-NS

[vitualis]

Yep, overscan us often between 5-10%.

On the PAL/NTSC demo VCD available here: http://www.vcdimager.org/discs.phtml#demo there are some high resolution screens with which you can measure the degree of overscan on your TV (pixels and percentage).

Regards.