Anamorphic Playback of SVCDs?

[ZoSTeR]

Hi!

I'm looking for a software player that is capable of displaying anamorphic SVCDs (encoded with dvd2svcd 4:3) with the right aspect ratio.
Normally I enable the widescreen function on my TV set but i'm looking for a solution to watch it in 16:9 on my PC.

GreetZ
ZoSTeR

[kris]

i don't really understand your question. anamorphic widescreen is svcd is a 480x480 (ntsc) with a DAR of 16:9, so there are no black bars encoded into the video stream. you can make an svcd with anamorphic widescreen (it won't play well in hardware dvd players tho...)...

watching it on a computer monitor should make no difference watching it anamorphic or letterboxed widescreen, since both will give you black bars (unless you have a widescreen monitor (?!)). the only point of anamorphic widescreen is really for widescreen tvs, and even then, really only useful in dvds.

but to answer your question anyways, the new powerdvdxp plays svcds with 16:9 anamorphic video fine, as does windvd.

[ZoSTeR]

I've tried PowerDVDXP with my anamorphic SVCD (which is encoded with the 4:3 option in dvd2svcd) but it doesn't change the aspect ratio. It just displays the streched anamorphic video (speaking of the full screen mode).
Is there some 16:9 flag that doesn't get set by dvd2svcd or what am i doing wrong?

GreetZ
ZoSTeR

[zambelli]

The problem is in the way we make anamorphic widescreen SVCDs. We know that most DVDs can't play back 16:9 SVCDs correctly, so we put a 4:3 DAR flag on them instead and force a full mode on our widescreen TVs.

What Zoster was trying to know was if there was a way of forcing 16:9 on a computer even though there's a 4:3 DAR flag on the SVCD.

[gft]

Try BSPlayer, it lets you force an aspect ratio during playback. Make sure you set the overlay mode or else it won't work so well.

-gft

[ChristianHJW]

.. is there a support list for those DVD players supporting anamorphic SVCD's ?

I encoded a SVCD from a DVD and chose wrong aspect ratio in TMPEG ( my bad ) and i really dont want to reencode again because this movie is not that important. The aspect ratio is zoomed in height, so i guess i just forgot to tell TMPEG that input is anamorphic 16 : 9.

If my little standalone would support playback of anamorphic SVDs i would try to simly tag the SVCD such, so there was no need to reencode ?

How do i change this tag in the MPEG stream afterwards ?
Or is it sufficient to simply change a file in the directory of the SVCD ?

[evilmantis]

SVCD cannot be taged. Yo will have to play it back on a wide screen TV & scretch the picture horizontaly. If your TV is 4:3 you will have to encode again.

[ZoSTeR]

Well you tag an mpeg file afterwards with an 16:9 flag. I did it with an CCE encoded film (by comparing some byte differences) but the tag (in the compiled svcd) was only recognised by WinDVD but not my stand alone player.

[evilmantis]

What program did you use to TAG. Im currently creating SVCD's from a 16:9 source to be played back on my stanalone & 16:9 (anamorthic) TV. The SVCD's i create are ok on my 16:9 TV because I just stretch image horizontaly which gives me the correct 16:9 aspect ratio. When I play then on my PC the picture fills out the screen giving me a "thined image effect". What I usualy do is turn off "lock aspect ratio" in WINDVD & this lets me resize it. I would be interested if you could tel me how to "tag" them so they play back in 16:9 in WINDVD without me having to ajust teh aspect ratio manualy. CHeers

[ZoSTeR]

You can either encode your film again with CCE having the DAR set to 16:9.
You can use the existing .ecl file created by DVD2SVCD and change the aspect_ratio setting from 2 (which is 4:3) to 3 (which is 16:9).
You have to leave the DVD2SVD setting at 4:3.

Or you can set the DAR in your existing mpeg with a HEX-Editor (eg WinHEX). To find the relevant byte i encoded a very short clip of the film with CCE set to 4:3 and again with 16:9 and looked for the differences.

I think it would help if there was an option for the CCE 16:9 setting in DVD2SVCD because now you always have to manually change the ecl file before encoding