From PC to TV...

[Nemo]

I've dutifully tried to find an answer to this question, since I am sure it had to have been asked before, but so far, nothing i have found has worked.

The problem:
I have multiple episodes (mpeg) of a TV show in 352x240 format. They play great on the computer. Whenever i burn them onto a VCD and throw them into my DVD player, i notice that thin bands from top/bottom, left/right are cut off. Not much is cut off, but there is definitely some picture missing, as if the screened zoomed in a little bit. When i attempt to play the DAT files from the VCD on my computer, they play fine.

What's the problem here? Is it the square vs. rectangular pixels on the computer vs. TV as i've seen explained in some places or what, and what can i do about it?

I've used TMPGenc to play around with some options, and so far i've found that if I set the Source Aspect Ratio to VGA 1:1 and the output aspect ratio to NTSC 4:3, the result mpeg has two thin black bands on top and bottom, but at least when i burn it, the whole picture is there, now I just need to do something with left/right parts of it.

Anybody have any clue what I am talking about it?

Thanks

[Nemo]

Well, since noone is too anxious to reply i think i've figured out a solution.

After doing some more reading, i've discovered that this problem of the picture looking too large for the screen is due to something called overscan. I had to experiment a little, but setting the Orientation to Center (custom) and the size to 320x224 seemed to have solved the problem, at least on my TV.

This should really be in the FAQ or the newbie guides, so moderator, please make a note of it. It'll save some poor soul hours of aggravation and tons of CDs.

-Nemo

[Dave B]

You are quite right. What you are seeing is overscan on your TV.

Unfortunately different TVs overscan with different amounts so there is no custom resolution or answer that will work for everyone.