Unsupported video resolution

[Din Viesel]

Hello everyone,

My Panasonic plasma tv is about 3 years old. It’s a HD Ready model but I don’t have the exact type number here.

When I try to play some avi files on it with my old Lacie multimedia hard drive I sometimes get a message saying “unsupported video resolution. Max..." followed by a maximum resolution which I can't remember right now.

Can anyone tell me if this message comes from the tv or the mediaplayer?

Sorry about the missing information, if necessary I can always get it later today.

Thanks already.

Din.

[jman98]

Best guess on the little information provided - your media player can't play files larger than 720x576 and your AVI files have larger resolutions. If you open an AVI file with MediaInfo and see a resolution larger than 720x576, this is probably the problem. Too bad you didn't write down the message. It probably told exactly what you want to know.

[Din Viesel]

Best guess on the little information provided - your media player can't play files larger than 720x576 and your AVI files have larger resolutions. If you open an AVI file with MediaInfo and see a resolution larger than 720x576, this is probably the problem. Too bad you didn't write down the message. It probably told exactly what you want to know.

Thanks for the quick reply. The message only said "Unsupported resolution. Max 123X123", nothing else. I'm not sure if this was clear in my first post. Like I said I can't remember the exact resolution mentionned in the message but 720X576 looks familiar.

Since it's probably not the tv I might try and convert the file to a supported resolution.

Then you will probably find me posting in the Video conversion sub-forum

[videobruger]

You should check your manual. Sometimes resolution restrictions only apply to certain file types (container).

[Din Viesel]

You should check your manual. Sometimes resolution restrictions only apply to certain file types (container).

I did. It doesn't say anything about this. There's these settings that you can choose from in the settings menu :

HD-resolution :

– Auto (standard) – 480p/576p
– 720p – 1080i
– 1080p

Actually, this is why I started wondering if it was the tv not being able to display the provided video.

[Cornucopia]

It would help immensely if you gave us actual MediaPlayer & TV model #s and MediaInfo text from one of the suspect files.

Scott

[Din Viesel]

Okay.

Panasonic TX P42 C3E

Here's the manual for the Lacie : http://www.lacie.com/download/manual/lacinema_classic_en.pdf

I also tried the file again and it says max resolution is 720X576 so chances are jman98 made an excellent educated guess when he said

Best guess on the little information provided - your media player can't play files larger than 720x576 and your AVI files have larger resolutions. If you open an AVI file with MediaInfo and see a resolution larger than 720x576, this is probably the problem. Too bad you didn't write down the message. It probably told exactly what you want to know.

Here's some info on the file I got from quicktime player.

XVID', 768 x 432
MPEG Layer 3, 2 channels, 48000 Hz

768 > 720 so there we have it?

Any easy solution for this? Besides watching it on my pc


EDIT : I just found a free video converter on my mac. (Any Video Converter) I'm suspicious because it was too easy to be true but it looks like it's converting to a supported resolution. We're at 81% completed. Will keep you guys updated.

[Baldrick]

I wouldn't trust anything quicktime says..use mediainfo to check if it'd really 768 pixels.

If it's above 720 pixels reconvert with for examaple avi recomp.

[Din Viesel]

That went just great! Except I converted to mov

Trying again...

[Din Viesel]

I wouldn't trust anything quicktime says..use mediainfo to check if it'd really 768 pixels.

If it's above 720 pixels reconvert with for examaple avi recomp.

Any Video Converter also says 768 so I'm guessing quictime was correct this time. Will get mediainfo though. Thanks for the tip.

Still waiting on completion.

[Din Viesel]

Hey, it worked!

Funny thing is that when playing the file it doesn't fill the whole screen but I can adjust the settings, I guess.

I know this should be in the video conversion sub forum but could anyone tell met which resolution to use for my tv? Resolution for the tv is 1024X768.

Thanks already for all the help.

[johns0]

That doesn't sound right for your tv resolution,it should be 1920x1080 unless its some oddball type that's 4:3.What's the tv model number?

[Din Viesel]

That doesn't sound right for your tv resolution,it should be 1920x1080 unless its some oddball type that's 4:3.What's the tv model number?

Panasonic TX P42 c3e. I found the resolution here http://www.lcd-compare.com/televiseur-PANTXP42C3-PANASONIC-TX-P42C3E.htm

It's in french but it speaks for itself. But it says 16:9?

[Din Viesel]

I found this in an online manual


Aspect Ratio
16:9


106 cm (diagonal)
921 mm (W) × 518 mm (H)
127 cm (diagonal)
1,105 mm (W) × 622 mm (H)
Visible screen size

Number of pixels
786,432 (1,024 (W) × 768 (H)) [3,072 × 768 dots]

[Cornucopia]

DO*NOT*USE Quicktime player as your reference for resolution, etc! It is KNOWN to convert the display behind the scenes and then tell you only the "converted" dimensions (among many other bothersome things). You can force it not to: ShowMovieProperties - Container Track - Presentation tab - Check Enable "Conform Aperture to - ENCODED PIXELS". Then make sure in the Video Track - Visual Settings that your Scaled size is identical to the "normal size".

But that is a waste of time, particularly when it will reset upon each new file. Use MediaInfo. There is a very good reason to do so.

That kind of monitor is common among slightly older 720p/"HD ready" monitors. It is not the limiting factor in this scenario. 1024 x 768 would NORMALLY be 4:3, so that means that the PAR of the pixels on the screen are not 1:1, but rather 4:3 (fat/wide pixels). It likely scales both 1080 and 720 HD material, as well as SD material (because neither is natively supported).

Are you connected via HDMI? Because if not, there is clearly a max to composite video, and likely a max to component video. HDMI should "auto negotiate" the supported resolutions between the player and the TV.

Can, via HDMI, you play a known 1080 or 720 video in full widescreen format on the TV? If so, your bottleneck is probably codec/container. The manual says it supports MP4 in "Xvid, AVI & Divx". Not to disparage your choices, but what you have there is a real LIMITED piece of kit. Not much bang for your buck compared to the many alternatives (WDTV, Roku, Boxee, etc., even Xbox & AppleTV). Doesn't even accept regular MPG1 or MPG2?

Scott

[Din Viesel]

Hi Scott,
Hi all,

Interesting reading material.

First of all sorry for the delay. I was going to sleep last night and my wife had already turned off the computer.

I do have hdmi and I have played dvd's on my tv that I think are 720p material so I think you're right when you say the display is not the problem. Especially since after converting the file to 720X576 the problem is gone. So I guess we can conclude that the mediaplayer simply won't play anything over 720X576 as jman98 already pointed out.

When I bought the Lacinema, it was an average deal (ok maybe just below average) with average possibilities but compared to what's available these days it is very, very limited. And then I'm not even going to start about the interface. UGLY! Works well but UG-LY! By the end of this year I'll be being a new computer. I'll have two then so I'll probably by a NAS server and a new mediaplayer so I can centralise all my mediafiles. I'm considering WD Mycloud and WDTV Live because of their ease of use.

I'll do some research on how to optimalise conversion settings for my tv. And maybe start a new thread in the conversion subforum.

Thanks!

R.

[Cornucopia]

Didn't get really much further in the manual, but it looks like you can at least use it as an external harddrive.

I did find from another internet source that your model is the "LaCinema Classic", not the "LaCinema Classic HD" or similar/higher. This makes it clear: what you have is an SD-only device, and it only UPSCALES to HD resolutions. It does NOT natively support anything above 720x576.

AFA formats go, it just supports: MPG4 in AVI as ISO MP4-in-"AVI" container, or more commonly as Xvid/DivX (in AVI or "DIvX" container). FYI, a DivX container is just a renamed AVI container with some additional capabilities for chapters/menus. It only supports up to DivX v6 compression. It doesn't look like MPG1 or MPG2 is explicitly supported (rare, even for that era), (although you might luck out and find that it is supported but just undocumented), and nothing nicer is supported (incl. WMV, AVC/h.264, VP8/9, etc). Nor is any other container besides AVI supported (which I find very surprising in a Mac-centric device).

Sounds like your subsequent plans are better thought out.

Good luck,

Scott

[Din Viesel]

Didn't get really much further in the manual, but it looks like you can at least use it as an external harddrive.

I did find from another internet source that your model is the "LaCinema Classic", not the "LaCinema Classic HD" or similar/higher. This makes it clear: what you have is an SD-only device, and it only UPSCALES to HD resolutions. It does NOT natively support anything above 720x576.

AFA formats go, it just supports: MPG4 in AVI as ISO MP4-in-"AVI" container, or more commonly as Xvid/DivX (in AVI or "DIvX" container). FYI, a DivX container is just a renamed AVI container with some additional capabilities for chapters/menus. It only supports up to DivX v6 compression. It doesn't look like MPG1 or MPG2 is explicitly supported (rare, even for that era), (although you might luck out and find that it is supported but just undocumented), and nothing nicer is supported (incl. WMV, AVC/h.264, VP8/9, etc). Nor is any other container besides AVI supported (which I find very surprising in a Mac-centric device).


Scott

Yeah, it's a drag. I could be wrong about this but when I got it MKV containers or h264 encoding wasn't al that common. Avi was the most common container and the old Lacinema wasn't all that crappy. After all this thing was conceived somewhere around 2008 - 2009. I must have got it a good year or so later for a good price because it was getting slightly outdated. So I never felt bad about it but it's really time for a change now.

Big thanks for all the help