Ading black bars in TMPG to correct aspect ratio

[thebach]

After I capture from laser disk and encode in TMPG, no matter what settings I use when I play the DVD on either of my TV's I seem to be losing about a half inch all the way around the screen. On the computer the DVD plays fine and I'm not losing the half inch. Does anyone know whats causing this or can I add a black border around the picture in TMPG that will count as part of the aspect ratio to scale the picture down a little on my TV?

[kees1952]

Thebach,
this is normal on a TV and is called overscan. It's about 5% in frame and line direction. This is why you don't see the test lines and teletext lines (which are in the beginning of each video frame) at the top of the screen, and you don't see the distorted lines at the bottom of the screen when playing a VHS video.
To get rid of it (and to see black bars when playing on yr computer!) resize to a format a bit smaller then the standards (virtualdub or avisynth) and encode in tmpgenc with the Video arrange method put to: centre.

Hope this helps, regards,

Kees Janssen.

[thebach]

hi, are you saying use smaller res than 740x480 for DVD? Can I do this while encoding with tmpg or while capturing? and what would be a good size? thanks

[kenmo]

I crop my CVDs to 312x440 and then put a border of 20 all the way arround (20 right, 20 left, 20 top & 20 bottom) giving me a picture 352x480 and I still see little of the black frame.

[thebach]

If I captured in VirtualDub to 700x460 instead of 740x480, then encoded in tmpg to 720x480 with center aspect ratio, does this sound right?

[kees1952]

Yes, this sounds ok. Use only "Centre" in tmpgenc because yr aspect ratio is already ok with 700x460.
This is a bit different then most of us do. Normally you capture in the standard format (740x480) and crop the image to get rid of information you don't see anyway, caused by the overscan. You want to see the complete picture on yr screen so you have to make it a bit smaller then usual. This is one of the ways to do this. Play a bit with the values you use (700x460) to see when black borders start to appear on your TV screen.

Regards,
Kees Janssen.