ConvertXtoDVD is cropping

I've been using ConvertXtoDVD for a few months now, and I've suddenly realized that it's seriously cropping the videos that I'm feeding to it.

For example, I've got an AVI file that is somewhat widescreen - I can see black bars at the top and bottom when I play the avi on my standalone player. But if I convert it to a dvd with ConvertXtoDVD, the picture is full screen, and I can see that a LOT of the picture has been cropped out.

At some point in the past, I tried going into Settings/TV Format and changing the TV Screen variable from Automatic to 16:9. Since I've been seeing this problem, I've tried encoding using Automatic, 16:9 and 4:3 and I don't see any difference.

Does anyone know what might have changed? Or is ConvertXtoDVD simply like this and I never noticed before.

Maybe just overscan that you haven't noticed before.

Originally Posted by aedipuss

you might try unistalling, deleting any settings files and re-installing. i'm using the latest version and have never run across that problem. can't recall it in any old version either, though....

Sounds like a plan. I'm going to run one last test (convert in all three settings) to verify that I'm not hallucinating this, and then I'll re-install. Thanks.

Ok - now it's getting strange.

I converted it and burned it to a disc. I used WinDVD to view the disc and it looked fine. WinDVD resized its window to widescreen, and the entire picture was visible.

I took the same DVD and played it on my standalone player (Philips 641) and it was badly cropped.

This player is playing everything else just fine. I tried the "zoom" button on the remote, but that just made it worse.

Well, I tried uninstalling/reinstalling and resetting the settings to default. No change.

I need to put a couple shows onto a DVD for someone that's in the hospital. I have a portable DVD player to loan her that doesn't do divx.

So I think I'll start another thread about CCE for the total newbie.

Try opening the ifo file with IFOEDIT and see what aspect ratio is used. If it's 4:3 then change it to 16:9

I took the same DVD and played it on my standalone player (Philips 641) and it was badly cropped.

In addition to the TV overscan, that POS player does additional cropping of its own:

But unfortunately, the player has a low white level of 97 IRE, fails below black, has some excessive pixel cropping (5 on each side), ...

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all&type=...PhilipsDVP-642

Originally Posted by guns1inger

The latest versions of ComvertXtoDVD support encoding avs scripts. Use FitCD to create a script that adds borders, then use this when encoding with ConvertXtoDVD. Your overscan problems will be, if not solved, substantially reduced.

I'm sure you're right. Although the avi files I created previously have the bars top and bottom, they were probably already there when I burned them. What I'm trying to burn now is simply widescreen without any pre-placed border.

Thanks for the help!

Originally Posted by guns1inger

You don't seem to get it.

Of that, I'm painfully aware.

The script FitCD creates resizes your image to fit inside the area visible on your TV screen (well, close as it can - overscan differs from TV to TV), by adding a border all the way around. You wont see this border on most TVs, but you will see almost the edge of your movie. This is the only way to fix this "problem" that you perceive.

This seems to be one of these situations where every time I find a potential solution, another problem occurs.

I did download FitCD and ran it. (A rather daunting array of controls to deal with for neophytes, but perhaps the initial defaults will get me close and I can experiment with tweaking.) I loaded my avi file and ran the script. Please don't beat me up for my ignorance here, but I assume that I should now drag the newly created avs file into ConvertXtoDVD. Taking a quick look at the preview window showed the output with a border on the top and bottom, which looked promising. However, when I tried to convert it, the log screen started quickly scanning lines like this:

Discontinuity #105 in stream#1: 00:2:46.958 of gap. This is frequent from TV source (ADVs time)

I did a little research on Google and couldn't find anything helpful. Someone recommended reinstalling the older version of CXD, but that didn't make a difference.

Originally Posted by FulciLives

Good Luck but please note that TV OVERSCAN is normal.

Yes, I do understand that, and thanks for taking the time to explain it clearly.

I actually have the ultra-secret decoder codes to get me into my TV's maintenance mode, and I've played around with modifying the overscan. I don't think that's what it was called in the menu, but it turned out to be set at a pretty optimal spot. When I adjusted it to see more picture, the edges started to distort.

But this situation that I'm talking about wasn't a problem with the TV overscanning. In this case, it was lopping off about a third of the picture.

I've got two versions of a specific TV show that I'm using for my testing. One works just fine. On my TV, I see the full width (or pretty nearly so), and the vertical is cropped with shadow boxes. On the other, everyone's head is cut off, and you can't see a LOT of the left and right side.

After running it through FitCD, it looked like it was going to work, but for the CXD errors I was getting.

I'm going to take some time and look through the guides you posted. Thanks for that!

Sorry if this has been answered before, but do LCD and Plasma TV's have any overscan or is it just CRT's ?