No widescreen upon playback with stand-alone DVD player

[myHTPC]

I purchased this program for converting OTA HDTV .ts files to DVD. Prior trials with Procoder and tpmgenc gave great video quality but audio was out of sync. SVCD2DVD keeps the audio & video in sync but I can't burn a DVD which plays in widescreen on a stand-alone DVD player (plays OK on a PC display using PowerDVD however).

My latest experiment was with SYTYCD episodes captured OTA from a local FOX network, 16:9 @ 1280 x 720. The resulting DVD gets stretched to full screen on a standard 4:3 TV using a Norcent DVD player and S-video cable (don't have component video to try out). Same results on my other Apex DVD player and TV with RCA-video connection. I tried loading the SVCD2DVD encoded/multiplexed .mpg (~4.5GB) into DVD-lab for authoring and the program "finished" creating the VIDEO_TS folder with .IFO and .VOB files but the largest .VOB was a few MB (tried opening the largest .VOB with PowerDVD which played a black screen for a few seconds then stopped). It's as though DVD-lab was unhappy about the muxing. Then I de-muxed the .mpg using tmpgenc before dropping it into DVD-lab and the authoring completed successfully, with normal widescreen playback and good audio/video sync on the stand alone DVD players.

I've read another another post about some program that could be used to insert widescreen flags but that makes for too many steps in the process. Am I missing something in the SVCD2DVD settings, or is this a known bug (fix?) with the program?

[ChrissyBoy]

Can i see your log? (logs are kept in the "logs" folder under where you installed SVCD2DVD)

[myHTPC]

Here they are, thanks.


logs.rar

[ChrissyBoy]

ok. I have a build for you to test - can you drop me an email?

[myHTPC]

Is anyone else having this problem?

[jimmythesaint57]

I have downloaded HDTV avi files. I was converting them with Nero 7, but I was having sync problems. The Nero DVD's were widescreen though. I purchased SVCD2DVD in hopes it would do a better job. It fixed the sync problems, but I lost the widescreen using SVCD2DVD. Is there a work around?

[ChrissyBoy]

Mmm - can i see your log too?

[jimmythesaint57]

Here it is.


svcd2dvdlog-20060905053516.txt

[myHTPC]

The bug appears to be in the .IFO file byte $200 (and maybe $201).

http://capital2.capital.edu/admin-staff/dalthoff/widescreen.html
http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/ifo.html#vidatt

When I examine the .IFO file for any commercial DVD (or the SYTYCD DVD that I authored with DVD-lab in my original post) where the .VOBs are 16:9 aspect ratio, then $200=4E in Hexedit. For any full screen or matted widescreen .VOB with 4:3 AR, the .IFO $200=43.

For the SVCD2DVD .IFO files that display widescreen incorrectly, $200=4C. The one bit that's different between the 4C and 4E .IFOs in $200 allows/disallows Pan & Scan in the standalone DVD player as described in the links above.

Software DVD players apparently default to the .VOB file aspect ratio for rendering the movie and ignore the .IFO file widescreen info.

So maybe this is not a difficult fix. Byte $201 also has a letterboxed/not letterboxed bit that might affect a standalone player (I have seen $201=80 where $200=43 or 4E, and $201=84 or 00 where $200=43. Of these, the $201=84 is the only one that sets the 1=Letterboxed bit. Of the four commercial DVDs I examined, this is on the Clerks DVD in 4:3 matted widescreen).

Perhaps someone with more experience with how these .IFO file bits affect a standalone could chime in.

[ChrissyBoy]

Ok. The thrust of the issue is that the DVD player is not set up correctly:

Clearing those last two bits, then, would tell the DVD player to apply its own correction algorithm to fix the picture. The bad thing about doing that is that if the user has an incorrectly configured DVD player connected to a 16:9 set, it might double-letterbox (you've probably seen that in electronics stores...) or crop and stretch to fit (another Best City Shack favorite). But if everything is configured correctly, the DVD player will correct the picture to fit the screen, which is presumably what we want! In fact, as I am a little bit demanding, my preference is to leave that 2's bit set and just clear the 1's bit, thus allowing the DVD player to letterbox, but NOT to pan and scan. So if I change that byte from $4F (01001111) to $4E (01001110), that should give me what I want.

So whilst i can change the pan and scan flag, before i do, can you tell me what your settings are for the TV Type (or TV Shape or Aspect Ratio) option? Is it set to 4:3 letterbox or 4:3 pan-and-scan or 16:9?

[myHTPC]

The DVD players were set to the factory default (4:3/PS in both cases) and TVs are plain 4:3 NTSC with composite video connections.

On the Apex AD-1500, toggling between 4:3/PS (default) and 4:3/LB DVD player setup makes no difference when playing the SVCD2DVD widescreen DVD.

On the Norcent, I tried changing the setup from 4:3/PS to 4:3/LB and it does correct the problem. When I wrote the original post, the Norcent remote was misplaced (needed for DVD player setup) and I just assumed that it would behave like the Apex. The Norcent is a newer player with progressive scan and component video so that may have something to do with it.

Maybe jimmythesaint57 could chime in and describe his results with the DVD player setup options (assuming that his remote control is not MIA ).

I did some more digging and a couple of posts suggest that leaving both bits disabled when video is 16:9 is an invalid combination per DVD standards, a hack, only allowed with IfoEdit and other tools used for rolling your own.

http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-92104.html

Disabling both auto-lb and auto-ps is not allowed (OK, IfoEdit will do it, but it shouldn't). 16:9 video MUST have one of the auto modes enabled so that it can be displayed on a 4:3 display.

https://www.videohelp.com/~r0lZ/pgcedit/doc/PgcEdit_manual_3.htm

The video aspect ratio (and for 16:9, how it will be displayed on 4:3 TVs). Be careful! The changes you make here in the IFO take precedence over those in the VOB and you may make changes that make your picture look too narrow or too stretched in the vertical plane. Also note that if you select 16:9, you must select at least one of Automatic P&S or Automatic Letterbox.

Don't know what's the source of this information. I'd imagine that there's a top level standard that DVD players and commercial authoring programs stick to. I can assert that the info is correct from examining .IFOs of several commercial letterbox DVD tiltes (though this isn't scientifically exhaustive) as well as my DVD-lab authoring results (ditto for the Nero 7 results per jimmythesaint57). And from comparing the Norcent and Apex player results, the DVD player setup menu fix does not work for all players.

[jimmythesaint57]

I checked my Sony DVP-NC685V and as you suspected it was set to 4:3 Pan Scan. I changed it to 16:9 and the DVD's are playing in wide screen. Problem solved. Thanks for helping me correct this. I have a whole season of files and the reason I suspected it was the software was that some of the files played in letterbox and others played in 4:3 on my widescreen tv. They are all playing wide screen now. Thanks again for the help even though it was not the software.

[ChrissyBoy]

I checked my Sony DVP-NC685V and as you suspected it was set to 4:3 Pan Scan. I changed it to 16:9 and the DVD's are playing in wide screen. Problem solved. Thanks for helping me correct this. I have a whole season of files and the reason I suspected it was the software was that some of the files played in letterbox and others played in 4:3 on my widescreen tv. They are all playing wide screen now. Thanks again for the help even though it was not the software.

Good to hear!

myHTPC: I have emailed you a new dll which will give you $200=4E for 16:9 DVDs... Let me know if it does indeed sort this out.

[myHTPC]

myHTPC: I have emailed you a new dll which will give you $200=4E for 16:9 DVDs... Let me know if it does indeed sort this out.

Yes it does, and thanks for the outstanding support!

[Bilar Crais]

ChrissyBoy -

When played on my standalone Philips DVP-642, I am having trouble with 16:9 content being honored with both raw HDTV to mpg2 DVD ready transcodes (I play the mpg2 as a data file on the standalone) and HDTV transport stream sourced, authored DVDs used from SVCD2DVD.

In the past, I've hacked the IFO in order to get widescreen 16:9 material to be honored in the standalone, with the player set for 4:3 pan and scan. I'm still having to do that. However, I'm at a loss as to how to get the transcoded DVD ready mpeg2 to play 16:9. Any ideas?

Thank you!

Cary F.

[Bilar Crais]

Anyone?

[ChrissyBoy]

Can you post your log file?. So this is a 16:9 DVD on a 16:9 TV?

[Bilar Crais]

So this is a 16:9 DVD on a 16:9 TV?

Hi..This is 16:9 HDTV source material, either transcoded to a DVD ready mpeg2, or SVCD2DVD authored DVD, played back on a 4:3 tv set, with a letterboxed presentation being the desired effect. No matter what the standalone aspect setting, it plays a stretched looking 4:3 aspect ratio.

Thanks!

svcd2dvdlog-20061011073116.txt