Pan & Scan on-the-fly?

[shill66]

I believe the DVD spec has a capability of doing variable pan-n-scan when encoded with the appropriate vector data. Are there any DVD authoring programs that enable the author to create this sort of DVD?

I don't plan on making it complicated at all. Here's what I want to do: present one 1.33:1 movie on a DVD, but offer it in two versions, (1) Full Frame (fills the screen from edge to edge, even on a PC) and (2) Windowboxed (when seen on a tv, you can see narrow black borders around all four edges). In other words, my vectoring is never changing, it's always the same. Theoretically it should be easy, I think!

Any hints or tips?

[SaSi]

Pan and Scan is not a "feature" of the authoring program. The P&S vector data as you say, are a part of the MPEG-2 video stream. As such, the MPEG-2 encoder program must add these to the video stream. Or a separate tool, if available, but before the MPEG-2 stream is fed to the authoring program.

For completeness, the P&S vector data are stored in "Picture display extension" headers immediately after the "Picture" headers.

CCE is the only encoder that has a P&S option. I wanted to try this a couple of months ago but never came to find the time.

Whether CCE adds useful vectors is unknown.

Once you get the P&S information in the MPEG-2 stream, then you need an authoring program that can produce a P&S DVD. There are (I think) a couple of flags that need to be set to a titleset for it to operate under P&S.

In theory, it should be simple. In practice, I've come across a couple of commercial DVD titles that come in flippers with one side delivering a widescreen version and the other one a 4:3 one. Why studios do that is a mystery.

[shill66]

Could be an interesting technical challenge for someone to tackle! But most of us are completely uninterested in pan-and-scan. Oh well! Thanks very much for the info, I'll take a look at CCE's capabilities (though I doubt I'll be able to figure anything out). If anyone else reading has any ideas, please post.

Anchor Bay was doing a few titles that took advantage of this capability, but very few (if any?) other companies use it. And even AB stopped, I think.

[shill66]

Thought I'd see if anyone new might have some help on this?

[shill66]

It's been a while since I tried this again. Anyone?