Menus Wrong Aspect 4:3 instead of 16:9

[kev99]

Hopefully being my first post this hasn't been answered before (I've spent the last couple of days searching the forums!!).

I read the article Guide: Making Widescreen Menus for Scenarist (NTSC only) but this just seems to make sure that your circles stay circles when distorted for 16:9.

I'm working on a 16:9 animated menu, with a subpicture and highlight in scenarist.

In simulation the buttons/highlights are positioned correctly with respect to the movie and work fine.

On PowerDVD, and the Playstation2 everything is positioned and works fine.

However if I play on my DVD/TV (which is 4:3), the movie is displayed in letterbox format (no zoom or pan active) but the menus appear to be placed in 4:3 format so all button/highlight positions are all in the wrong place !!.

Anyone seen this before and have any ideas, I've been wrestling with this for a few weeks now.

Forgot to mention I'm working on PAL not NTSC so sub pictures images are 720x576.

[kitchy]

Are you using both menu sub streams...??
I had the same problem the other day, and found that if you are to do a WS menu, I'm guessing that your menu vob files come out as 4:3 in dvd2avi. It's actually 4:3 pan & scan. You need to extract both sub streams from the menu vob and you'll then get 2 sub formats fitting each format. You also need to set W on one language and P on the other to get it to work.
Hope this helps..

Kitchy

[kev99]

This isn't a DVD rip. I've done some 16:9 DV Camcordering.

The subpicture was created @ 720x576 bitmap and then added to the track. Buttons defined etc. I have enabled Wide and Letter (scenarist won't create the vobs without these 2, should I have included pan as well ?). All looks OK its just when is played on the old TV the buttons are displaced.

[dan]

I'm not completely sure of what exactly is going on...

If you want for the menu to display in letterbox mode, you'll need to make a subpicture to correspond with that display mode. [Maybe you did this already but...] you'd go about doing that by resizing the wide subpictures from 1024 x 576 [if that's your working resolution] to 720 x 404, then centering that vertically in a new image that is 720 x 576 and making the subpictures line up with that while filling the transparent areas with white, or whatever your background color is [these numbers are for PAL]. These would be subpictures for the "Letterbox" mode. I'm not totally sure of the math there, but I think that's what it'd take. This would explain why the subpictures don't line up in your set-top that is set on letterbox mode. Unfortunately it doesn't explain why your Playstation 2 shows it correctly (maybe it uses a different decoding chip than normal that handles the display modes differently? Just a guess]. PowerDVD plays it fine because it uses the "wide" setting, which has subpictures that line up.


[Sorry that this sounds dumb, but...] The video shouldn't be encoded with the Pan and Scan flag on unless you want that display mode to be utilized. That could be part of the problem if you accidentally turned it on...

Edit: Oh yeah....did you remember to set the highlight in each display mode? That could also be it...

Hope this helps, report back if you could...
Dan

[kev99]

OK Thanks, I've clicked, I need a subpicture for wide and a seperate for letterbox. (This does make the highlight layer a bit busy, with duplicate entries for the same button in different places).

I assume I now use SPRM14 to determine the configuration and enable the appropriate button to start. If yes anyone got the bitvalue settings for this register.

If this is all yes, now I'm rocking :)

[dan]

This thread is about this [sprm for setting display mode]...
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18992

Looks like, if the value is evenly divisible by 1024, the player is set in wide mode. If not, it's in 4:3, with mod 512 for letterbox and mod 256 for pan and scan. But, I think it's only important whether or not the player is set in wide mode or not, being that most menus only support one display mode in 4:3 [usually Pan and Scan, but in your case, letterbox].

Dan

[mpucoder]

Try here http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/DVD/sprm.html
the values for SPRM14 are:
bit10-bit11 preferred display aspect ratio 0=4:3, 1=not specified, 2=reserved, 3=16:9
bit8-bit9 current video mode 0=normal, 1=pan/scan, 2=letterbox, 3=reserved

[dan]

just for the sake of completing this thread...

duh, I looked back to a project I did a little bit ago....

The player automatically displays the correct subpicture track depending on the setting of aspect ratio and display mode the player. No SPRM check or anything...it's nice and simple. Just be sure that you have each subpicture stream set-up correctly.

Sorry about that,
Dan

[drpaulng]

I think you've got the same problem of mine.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59663

If everyone else does all right according to the manual method, the problem might be somewhere else, such as incompability of Windows system (for example, not in English native, but other language versions). I myself work in a Traditional Chinese Windows XP environment. I don't see any point if I did all the way in compliance with the rule, how come my work always failed in the real world but was successful in the Scenarist simulation windows.