Widescreen problems

[bwa]

First, I'm not shure where this post should be, so bare with me if I'm at wrong forum.

Then to the problem.

With my Sony Pc100 I have started to record in widescreen (16:9 I think). I use pinnacle Studio 7 to capture the movie, after editing I save the movie as a AVI, and uses TMPEG Enc to create VCD and/or SVCD.So far I have set TMPG settings-Advanced-Source Aspect Ratio = 16:9 625 line (PAL) and Video - Aspect Ratio = 4:3 Display. (SVCD)

That settings has always created a MPG with black borders (shows in Windows Media Player). At my 4:3 TV the film has been played (with a Pioneer 525) very fine, but a test in a TV store showed black border also when playing on a Widescreen TV !

I feel something is bad here... Help me out please, hvor shall I configure the encoder to get correct picture on all TV's

And by the way, If I play the original recording on the Sony camera connected through a composite (SCART) connection to my 4:3 TV, the movie is widescreen at the camera's monitor, but is streched to fill the whole screen at my TV!

Something is terrible wrong here....

[bwa]

Hmm.. 53 views but no reply

Please help me with widescreen encoding! I use TMGEnc and has discovered that a 16:9 recording created a black border when the source is set to 16:9 and output is set to 4:3. The output is not possible to alter whith the templates...

Is there any 16:9 general info available here?

[kingoflubrication]

the black bars at the top and bottom are common if you choose the output as 4:3. i recently asked a question on this forum as to how to do get the black backs to show with 16:9 mini-dv source footage; as i do not have a widescreen tv, and want the display on 4:3 ratio tvs to not look vertically stretched. if you dont want the letterbox bars try selecting 16:9 as the output. if you are useing a template you will have to unlock it.

[bwa]

My DVD-player is a service, so I'm not able to test, but I thing I have tried to set the output to 16:9, but then it was streched at my 4:3 TV.

If the solution is to create a SVCD for 4:3 TV and a SVCD for a 16:9 TV, I cannot understand why ? Ordinary widescreen movies and DVD movies has no troube to show on both TVs ?

[kinneera]

Keep in mind DVDs DO in fact experience this problem to some extent. A large number of double-layer DVDs contain both widescreen and regular aspect ratio versions of the movie, which can be selected in the menu system of the DVD.

It also depends heavily on what settings your TV and DVD player make available to you. A letterboxed 4:3 aspect ratio will fill the screen correctly on a widescreen TV if it knows to crop the letterboxing (black bars) in the video stream. It's my understanding that some TVs can do this and others can't. If it can't, you have to have an actual 16:9 video stream.

If you want to play a widescreen movie on a 4:3 TV, you either have to have the black bars, or be willing to accept a distorted or cropped version of the movie.

[bwa]

hmmm interresting. This was a kind of answer that I wanted to see, case it's confirming the problem I have experienced.

But if the 4.3 output has black footer/header, some of the 576 horizontal lines are lost compearing to 16:9 output ?

I still think there is some strange things happening here. If there is a 16:9 flag (or something) in the stream the 4:3 TV should have information to keep the aspect ratio ?

[kinneera]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
But if the 4.3 output has black footer/header, some of the 576 horizontal lines are lost compearing to 16:9 output ?
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From the perspective of the video stream itself, I don't think that is true, but from the perspective of the TV, I suppose it probably is.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
I still think there is some strange things happening here. If there is a 16:9 flag (or something) in the stream the 4:3 TV should have information to keep the aspect ratio ?
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This confuses the responsibilities of the respective devices. Your DVD player is responsible for determining the aspect ratio, not the TV. If the DVD player thinks it is outputting to a widescreen TV, then it will do nothing to adjust the aspect ratio for a 4:3 TV, thus resulting in cropping or distortion. Thus, this goes back to setting options appropriately or, barring that, encoding the video in the most appropriate way. The TV is a passive player, it simply displays the video stream that has already been translated back to an analog signal by the DVD player, thus it knows nothing about the characteristics of the original MPEG.

[bwa]

About the 4:3 black areas, I used the computer to discover that. If I play the MPEG2 on my computer , there is black header/foot in the MPEG2 stream, so it's there before the TV gets it.

If the TV is a passive player, how can it pick the 16:9 or 4:3 'picture' when the TV Station is sending this over the ordinary RF antenna ? My 4:3 TV always plays both (4:3/16:9) movies fine when I'm looking at the State Monopoly channel...

[kinneera]

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On 2001-09-18 03:21:04, bwa wrote:
About the 4:3 black areas, I used the computer to discover that. If I play the MPEG2 on my computer , there is black header/foot in the MPEG2 stream, so it's there before the TV gets it.
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No data is actually associated with the black areas, so extra bits are thrown at the video, in some sense. From the perspective of MPEG, this means that the quality is basically the same. Keep in mind that not all the lines in analog video are actually used for the video itself.

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If the TV is a passive player, how can it pick the 16:9 or 4:3 'picture' when the TV Station is sending this over the ordinary RF antenna ? My 4:3 TV always plays both (4:3/16:9) movies fine when I'm looking at the State Monopoly channel...
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This probably is a result of how the movie is broadcast. Similar to VHS tapes rented from a video store, some movies are letterboxed and others are "formatted to fit your screen." Both formats aren't being broadcast over RF, but the tapes that the broadcast stations have obtained are sometimes letterboxed, sometimes not. This is one of the benefits of DVDs, it is becoming possible to offer both options in one product.