Widescreen/Borders/4:3 problem

[spikedrod]

can anyone help me? when i make a vcd from a widescreen movie it either adds borders to the top and bottom (so i have to use the resize button on my widescreen tele), or it looks tall and thin on a 4:3 tv with no borders.

can i not have it with borders on a 4:3tv and no borders on a 16:9 tv (WITHOUT resizing the picture on the tv end and losing resolution?)

[SingSing]

There are three DVD screen formats.

16:9 TV, 4:3 TV, and movie wide screen.

If you have movie wide screen, then you are going to have
black borders ( by spec ) on 16:9TV, or 4:3 Tv.
The only different is how much black border ?

If the movie is in 16:9 format, then it has no border on 16:9 Tv,
and have a small black border on 4:3TV.

If you have both wide and normal TV, I suggest you want to buy
or rent 16:9 enhanced Movies.

But a movie normal come in disc that have 16:9 or
Full and wide screen 2 disc set.

These are standards, you only can change it, unless you have friends
that own the studio.

[spikedrod]

hmm, perhaps i phrased the question wrong.

the movie is in 16:9 so i encode it in 16:9 on the VCD
looks fine on the 16:9 tv but all thin and stretched on the 4:3 tv

or... if i encode it as 16:9 borders it looks fine on the 4:3 tv with the borders as wanted, but on the widescreen tv i get the borders and thus have to resize the screen to get rid of the borders thus losing resolution.

when you play a normal 16:9 dvd it'll have the borders on a 4:3 or full screen on a 16:9 WITHOUT resizing (on most titles)

[SingSing]

16:9 enhanced DVD format was agreed by studio, DVD player maker, and
TV maker. Thus it is supported by all DVD players know how to resize it
for 16:9 or 4:3 Tv on the fly. That's why agreed standard do nice thing.
There are complian when these Movies resized to play on 4:3 Tv, there are minor impection/artifact.

VCD, SVCD does not support anamophorics. It is like some DVD DISCs come with a full screen and movie wide screen in the package.

The partical things is a black CD is $0.20. Encode one for 4:3 Tv and one for 16:9, just like the two disc DVD set. Use the right format disc for
the desirable TV. $0.20 is too hard to spend effort to save.

[spikedrod]

that's all true, but it takes ******* hours to encode

[SingSing]

I let the encoding start before I leave for office.
You can typically do couple of movies on VCD per day.

Computer does not wear out like a lawnmover anyway.

[telemike]

I have same problem. I create "anamorphic" (encoding a 16:9 movie to 4:3 VCD so it is squished horizontally) VCD of widescreen movie so that when I play it on my widescreen it looks normal. On a 4:3 TV it will be squished horizontally. IF i encoded it with letterboxing it would be widescreen letterbox on 4:3 but on my widescreen I would have to zoom losing resolution.......and............the 2.35:1 films don't get squished enough encoding to VCD "anamorphic" so that when I play it is not quite right..............haven't solved that one yet.

Feeding a DVD player set to 16:9 mode to my Terapin VCD creates perfect "anamorphic" VCD's though..........just can't do XVCD

[spikedrod]

perfect anamorphic vcd's? you sure? and terrrapin is some vcd software? can it do straight DVD->VCD and DIVX/AVI->VCD conversions?

[telemike]

The Terapin is a stand alone VCD recorder.

http://www.goterapin.com

[SingSing]

Anamorphics means the DVD player can switch between 4;3 and 16:9.
If you have to set your DVD player to 16:9. Then you miss the point.

[telemike]

I have a widescreen TV (16:9)

DVD Player 16:9 out -> Terapin VCD Recorder (4:3 320x240) -> Widescreen TV (16:9) with FULL mode stretches the 4:3 picture to 16:9 restoring the widescreen movie format.

If I play the VCD on a regular 4:3 TV it will look squashed.

[telemike]

The only problem I have is with doing 2.35:1 movies to VCD using TMPGenc and wanting to achieve the same anamorphic VCD that I can do with my Terapin....

[Dan East]

Can someone verify for certain that the Video setting on the DVD player (16:9 widescreen, 4:3 letterbox and 4:3 pan&scan) has absolutely no affect on VCD/SVCD/XVCD playback? If so that sucks. Is that true even for XVCD encoded at DVD resolution? What about encoding at MPEG2? Is there anything that can trick the player into sizing on-the-fly like it does for DVD?

Thanks.

Dan East

[geek rock]

Can someone verify for certain that the Video setting on the DVD player (16:9 widescreen, 4:3 letterbox and 4:3 pan&scan) has absolutely no affect on VCD/SVCD/XVCD playback? If so that sucks. Is that true even for XVCD encoded at DVD resolution? What about encoding at MPEG2? Is there anything that can trick the player into sizing on-the-fly like it does for DVD?

Thanks.

Dan East

i can verify the fact that VCDs and SVCDs are NOT ANAMORPHIC!

it's a part of the DVD specification. nothing at all to do with VCD and SVCD.

-Mark