Destination = 4:3 TV, encode as 4:3 or as 16:9?

[Chainmax]

I am going to encode an NTSC 16:9 source to DVD, and FitCD gave me the following resizing/cropping/overscan recommendations:

Unchecked Anamorphic option (encoding as 4:3)
Lanczos4Resize(688,352)
AddBorders(16,64,16,64)

Checked Anamorphic option (encoding as 16:9)
Lanczos4Resize(656,448)
AddBorders(32,16,32,16)

Now, the TV I'll be playing this on is a common 4:3 one. What difference would it make if I encode as 4:3 or 16:9? Also, one of my other TVs (also a common 4:3 one) has a "squeeze" mode that can alternate between wide, normal and zoom modes. The squeze is worthless on 4:3 material, but is it useful for this encode given that it's a common TV and so I have to unclude overscan borders anyway?

[Inc]

DO keep 16:9 anamorph sources as 16:9 anamorph as you never know if sooner or later you could enyoy a 16:9 TV set.
Encoding 16:9 letterboxed to 4:3 ( = anamorph to non anamorph) means killing detailed pixelinformation of the sources height.

If playing back 16:9 DVDs on a 4:3 TV then the SAP does the Letterboxing to 4:3 automatically for you if setted right via the SAPs OSD menue.

Result will be less compressable but its worth the quality on a 16:9 TV.


AddBorders(32,16,32,16)
Watch out if playing back that one on a very new TV set as most never TVsets do got a TV Cache of 5% (Overscan) only. So a maximal border addition of 16px on each side at 704 width's should be enough.

Sorry, I see youre ending with 720 width in total - then its ok.

:)

[Chainmax]

Thanks for the answer :). So, if I do Lanczos4Resize(656,448).AddBorders(32,16,32,16) (720x480) and encode as 16:9 on CCE then the screen would be filled on a 16:9 TV, right? According to VideoHelp, 16:9 anamorphic is only supported as 720x480, so no 704x480 for me :(.


P.S: sorry for the newb question, but what exactly do you mean by "a TV Cache of 5% (Overscan)" (i.é: how does that translate to a max overscan of 16px)?

[Prodater64]

DO keep 16:9 anamorph sources as 16:9 anamorph as you never know if sooner or later you could enyoy a 16:9 TV set.

Hi inc, I was understood (interchanging posts with Dialhot) that anamorph material is always 4:3.
So call that material as 16:9, as we can see also in many encoders, is a mistake.
Could you explain me it again. I understood wrong what Dialhot said me or what?
Thanks.

[Matthew]

Prodater64, presumably what he meant was that the unadjusted image is 4:3. But after correction (squishing by dvd player) it is 16:9.

[Boulder]

According to VideoHelp, 16:9 anamorphic is only supported as 720x480, so no 704x480 for me :(.

Would you mind posting a link which says this? I've been using 16:9 for encodes that are 704x576 and have had zero problems. I don't think there's a difference between NTSC and PAL in this case.

[Inc]

Yep, calling an anamorphic Picture just "16:9" is a very confusing.

16:9 is a DAR information context, where Anamorphic is a PAR information context, and thats a clear difference. For shure in times of now where HDTV real 16:9 is available.

Thanks for the answer . So, if I do Lanczos4Resize(656,448).AddBorders(32,16,32,16) (720x480) and encode as 16:9 on CCE then the screen would be filled on a 16:9 TV, right? According to VideoHelp, 16:9 anamorphic is only supported as 720x480, so no 704x480 for me .

If these calcs are ot of FitCD then they are correct imho.
16:9 Anamorphic is also for shure supported at 704x576 as this is my common anamorph "transcoding" imagesize Im using since I own a DVD burner.

P.S: sorry for the newb question, but what exactly do you mean by "a TV Cache of 5% (Overscan)" (i.é: how does that translate to a max overscan of 16px)?

In PAL a full image is 768x576 where 5% Cache subtraction results in 730x547.
Squeezing that to PAL DVD D1 PAR = 667x547.
704x576 - 667x547 = 37x29 ≈ borders of 19,15,19,15 around the image.
So 16,16,16,16 is almost perfect for matching the TV cache. And as anyway of 720 width images only 702 are shown on a TV device, 32,16,32,16 will be ok at NTSC encodings as the TV squeezes/crops to 640x480 where at PAL the TV stretches/crops to 768x576.

[Chainmax]

Boulder, incredible: here (http://www.videohelp.com/dvd) is the link, the info is at about the middle of the page and it states that 16:9 Anamorphic on PAL and NTSC is only supported by 720x480/576.

Bonus question: how can I demux the sound and keep it intact? As far as I know, with VDubMod I can only extract it with a WAV header.

[Inc]

Well, I had an older SAP (from 2001) of my own which wasn't able to play back anamorph SVCDs correctly, but that was all. 704 and 720 no problem. Almost all newer ones "should" support anamorph 704 streams.

Bonus question deserves a bonus thread start in the audioforum or authoringforum.
But, do use DgIndex as its known for a good demuxing/Videodecoding as anyway you will process your source d2v via Avisynth.

[Boulder]

Then again, the DVD Demystified FAQ doesn't say anything about non-supported resolutions. Or did someone find a definitive answer there?

What comes to audio, for MPEG sources, DGIndex can extract the audio just fine. For AVI sources, I recommend AVIMux GUI.

[Chainmax]

incredible: my TV is an old Samsung BioVision.

Boulder: I didn't know AVIMuxGUI could do demultiplexing, I never read the rtfm.txt file :o.

[Inc]

The TV has no influence in this part.
The signal will be just set to 1:1 via Mhz.
I was refering to your SAP (StandalonePlayer) who just serves the 704x480px @ 13,5Mhz to the TV which takes 702px and brings them to 640x480 (711x486 to 648x486).
A 16:9 TV in its 16:9 Mode just desqueezes the signal using a factor of 1,333 multiplying the signals Mhz. On a normal 4:3 Tv you have to force the SAP to do the letterboxing for you, means: He squeezes/devides the height by 1,333 and adds black borders to fit again a full 704x480 signal send to your TV @ 13,5Mhz.

[scharfis_brain]

Boulder, incredible: here is the link, the info is at about the middle of the page and it states that 16:9 Anamorphic on PAL and NTSC is only supported by 720x480/576.

Haha. Net-Fairytales!

http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/DVD/Book_B/Video.html states:

4:3 (all video formats)
16:9 (all formats except 352 pixels/line)

So 704x576(480) is a valid resolution for anamorphic 16:9.

[Chainmax]

Cool, more compressibility for me :).