Question for owners of Widescreen tv

[ashtones]

I was curious if anyone who owns a widescreen tv has encoded movies from an avi. In my settings (Tmpeg) I always chood fullscreen keep aspect ratio which I think is a 4:3 setting. When this is played on a wide screen tv how does it come out? What I mean is it cropped not only on the top and bottom but also on the sides as well? If so should I then choose 16:9 ratio instead of full screen 4:3? I just would hate to be making all these movies to then have them look silly on a widescreen.

[DEmberton]

What aspect ratio is your source? If your source is 16:9 (and you set it that way in TMPEng), then "Full Screen Keep Aspect" will letterbox the image for you. If your source is 4:3, then it should leave it alone.

If you watch 4:3 on a WS TV, then what should happen is that the TV switches to 4:3 mode and you get black bars down the left and right. Unfortunately, lots of people set up their WS TV's wrong (at least they do in the UK) and watch everything in stretchy-o-vision. There's no helping those people

Dave

[ashtones]

.l

[ashtones]

The source is 16:9. So if I encode in Tmpeg full screen keep aspect ratio will the ws see it as a 4:3 thus putting black bars on the right and left plus the black bars created by tmpeg. I only say this because when I play movies using power dvd on my pc the window is ws on store bought dvd's. But on ones I have encoded in tmpeg the window is 4:3 with the black bars on the top and bottom from tmpeg. I hope I am making sense. I know it is a little confusing.

[Vejita-sama]

Here's how it works. When you encode a 16:9 movie as an x(S)VCD you hard encode the black bars at the top and bottom of the MPEG. The DAR of the x(S)VCD is 4:3.

When you play a 4:3 source on a HDTV it adds black bars to the sides (left/right) of the picture. It will do the same to your x(S)VCD (as it's a 4:3 MPEG). The hard encoded letterboxing will remain.

x(S)VCDs can't be apomorphic.

[ashtones]

Ok. Thank you for your answer. It was the one I was expecting but hoping maybe wasn't the case. Its dissapointing to think now if I buy a widescreen all the work I have done encoding will look stupid on it. Anyway from this point on how can I encode a 16:9 source to 16:9 not 4:3? Or anamorphic like you said. I am not sure when I will get a ws set but eventually I will and I want to make sure that the stuuf I am creating today will take full advantage of it.

[flaninacupboard]

why do americans refer to widescreen sets as HDTV sets? the two don't go hand in hand, and it's just something else to confuse people.
Ashtones, most widescreen sets will detect if a 4:3 image has letterbox bars, then expand the image to fill the screen horizontally, and as such clip the screen vertically. this is good because it stop the image having bars on all four sides, but is bad because if there are any subtitles or captions in the lower letterbox bar, hey get cropped.

[ashtones]

Now that is really really good news. So the ws set can tell a letterboxed 4:3 program and fill the screen. Thank you so much for this info! One more small question then does the picture degrade during this process like when you use the zoom feature on your dvd player?

[DEmberton]

Now that is really really good news. So the ws set can tell a letterboxed 4:3 program and fill the screen. Thank you so much for this info! One more small question then does the picture degrade during this process like when you use the zoom feature on your dvd player?

Mine can't, I have to manually put it in Zoom Mode, but that's fair enough. But yes, the picture does degrade. For one thing, the TV is stretching both horizontally and vertically, and on my TV this gives a horizontal line texture to the image. Secondly, the actual image area is smaller and encoded at a lower resolution.

Ideally you'd do it anamorphically. The only way I know how to do this is to lie to TMPEng about the source aspect ratio (i.e. set it to 4:3), and set the output ratio to Full Frame. Then you need to use pulldown.exe to set the aspect ratio to 16:9. A compatible player will then stretch it out horizontally for WS TV's, or letterbox it for 4:3 TVs. This should be okay for DVDs, but anamorphic WS SVCDs are a bit of a grey area and most standalone players won't cope with them properly.

Dave

[ktnwin]

This is quite an interesting subject for me because I just bought a WS TV (65"). Indeed all the X/S/VCD I made before for the 4:3 TV now look stupid on this new WS:
1) either I have black bars all around (top/bottom/left/right)
2) or have have to set the TV to stretch both horz. and vert. to fit the screen (for 16:9 letter boxed movie). Quality loss is obvious here.

The other thing is my digital 8 camcorder can tape with 16:9 ratio (anamorphic tape). After converting this to DVD (anamorphic of course), the DVD fits the movie perfectly on the WS TV (no black bar anywhere).

The trouble is when I play this DVD on a 4:3 TV, everyone is tall and thin. I have been told that I can set the DAR flag of this DVD disc to be 19:6 and the DVD player can automatically add black bars on top and bottom to keep 16:9 ratio (just as commercial DVD movie)

[flaninacupboard]

that's correct, you can. your encoder can set the aspect ratio, at least TMPGenc and CCE (the two most here use) can, as can your authoring software. if you need any more info, let us know what encoder/auth soft you use.

[DEmberton]

And as I mentioned above, you can use pulldown.exe to set the video to 16:9 without reencoding.

Dave

[shito]

Call me thick, but I still don´t quite get it.

O.K., here´s what I wanna do: I want to capture a non-anamorphic 1:1.85 letterboxed (black bars top and bottom) picture from a laserdisc and put it on either a VCD or a SVCD or a DVD in the anamorphically stretched format. I´m aware that if I put it on a (S)VCD, the picture will look stretched vertically (or squished horizontally, whichever way you want to see it) on a 4:3-display (if the display can´t be set to 16:9). However, this doesn´t concern me. How do I put the needed additional horizontal TV-lines in there, so I get an anamorphic output?

Just for your information: I´m using a projector (Plus HE-3100 Piano) with an anamorphic lense in front of it (ISCO) to get the right proportions for the projected picture without sacrificing image resolution (since the projector has a 4:3 panel). If I watch the laserdisc on the projector, the projected image will either be stretched horizontally (with using the lense), which makes it fill my screen horizontally but looks inacceptable, or it only fills a fraction of the screen (without the lense), since the picture is not wide enough to fill the screen horizontally without the "lense-stretch" and, on top of that, has the black bars on top and bottom. Thats why I want to have an anamorphically stretched source to fill my screen and finally watch some of my precious Laserdiscs (reencoded to (S)VCD/DVD) on the big screen instead of on my TV set.

I hope, I made myself clear. I´m having a hard time, since I´m not a native English-speaker, sorry for any translation errors, but this forum is a better source for information and help on the subject than any comparable German forum I have come across, so I´m doing my best to keep up with you guys.

Greets from Germany
Konrad

P.S.: You think, an image would help to clarify my point? I would have to make something up.

[Craig Tucker]

Ashtones, most widescreen sets will detect if a 4:3 image has letterbox bars, then expand the image to fill the screen horizontally, and as such clip the screen vertically. this is good because it stop the image having bars on all four sides, but is bad because if there are any subtitles or captions in the lower letterbox bar, hey get cropped.

My set has a widescreen subtitle option, so it leaves the black bar just at the bottom.

[DEmberton]

So you want to go letterboxed to anamorphic in TMPEng.

I think the way to do this is use the crop feature in TMPEng to cut off the black bars top and bottom, and set video arrange method to fullscreen. That'll give you the tall and thin effect. You may well have to then set the 16:9 flag seperately using pulldown.exe, not sure if TMPEng can actually do this for you.

I've not got TMPEng in front of me so this is from memory.

Dave

[shito]

@demberton: Thanks for the reply. Sounds like a plan. I´m gonna try it out when I get home.
BTW: if TMPGenc really gives me the tall-and-thin-look, how does it accomplish this? Where does the added vertical resolution come from? Would you have an idea about that? And what is this pulldown.exe-program? First time iI´ve heard about it is in this thread.

Greets
Konrad

[DEmberton]

TMPEng will just stretch the image vertically to the required size. If your source is 720x576, then once you cut the black bars off it'll be something like 720x400 (a guess don't use those numbers!), then TMPEng will stretch it to 480x576 (for SVCD) or 720x576 for DVD.

Obviously doing that loses some quality, but doing it at this stage is probably better than having your TV stretch a letterboxed version, which is kind of the point.

A link to pulldown.exe will be on the tools section somewhere. Amongst other things it'll let you set the aspect ratio of the video without having to reencode it.

Dave

[suerpflysocal]

I posted a similar question but did not see this post.

Can I convert a 16:9(encoded as 4:3), which is the second option in DVD2SVCD, to 16:9(anamorphic, encoded as 16:9), the third option in DVD2SVCD without reencoding?

You guys are saying to use pulldown.exe. Does it tag it as 16:9 or 16:9 anamorphic?

How exactly do you use pulldown.exe to do that (what would the command line be)?

[suerpflysocal]

let me elaborate on my dilemma:

I have two versions of a movie. A SVCD 16:9 on CD and a Xvid Divx at 640 x 272. The SVCD is perfect...incredible picture quality, rivals any DVD. But, when played in regular tV there are black bars which is expected. However, when played on Mitsubishi widescreen TV, again we see black bars but it is now stretched not up and down but left and right making everyone look fat (like what a 4:3 picture look like on widescreen TV). My conclusion is that it is encoded to 16:9 (bars added, encoded at 4:3) (the second option on DVD2SVCD.

I then tried to take the Xvid and encode it with DVD2SVCD at 16:9 (anamorphic, encoded at 16:9). It looks much better aspect ratio wise. There is only a thin bar top and bottom and the picture is not stretched left and right. Howver, regardless of my setting, the picture quality is much inferior to that the original SVCD, much more pixelation, so I don't want to use this option.

Thus I would like to take my SVCD, extract the mpg, make it 16:9 anamorphic without reencoding. Will pulldown.exe do this?

[DEmberton]

The point about anamorphic is that the black bars aren't there on the video, it's added by your DVD player if you play back in 4:3 (or not if you playback in WS). Your SVCD has the black bars encoded as part of the video, so although pulldown.exe would let you force it to be 16:9 without reencoding, what you'll get out will be wrong in both cases.

Your WS TV should have a zoom mode, and that's what you need to use to watch letterboxed WS.

To get your SVCD anamorphic you really need to go back to the source and start again. Anamorphic SVCDs are a bit of a grey area though, which is why they're almost always done letterboxed.

Dave

[suerpflysocal]

any guides for anamorphic SVCD?

What about doing an XSVCD?