Doom9's Forum - View Single Post - making Anamorphic SVCDs -non DVD source

Kedirekin · 17th November 2001, 23:40

Wow. That is a whacky question. I think you're going to get a lot of feedback (most of it negative).

I think the naive answer is simple enough - just crop 60 pixels (or is it 64?) off top and bottom and encode. For PAL, I guess it would be 72 pixels (or 77?).

However, there are some things you should consider. I don't want to squash your enthusiasm, I just want you to be aware.

- obviously, you'll be loosing some of the picture (unless you're cropping away black bars, which I think is the case with Enterprise - though I don't think the bars are *that* big)
- you'll be cropping from a source that's already limited to about 480 (or 576) lines of resolution (broadcast). When you resize the cropped image back to 480 (or 576), you really won't gain anything in resolution/quality
- most players don't support anamorphic SVCDs, despite the fact that it is in the spec. You may have to do a 'distorted' 4:3 encode and tell your TV to switch it to 16:9 (if your TV supports that). People with 4:3 TVs won't be able to watch these discs (or they can, but they'll be distorted)
- alternatively, you could do a non-distorted 4:3 encode with black bars, and tell your 16:9 TV to resize the playback to full-width (if it supports that), thereby eliminating the black bars. This will achieve practically identical results, but makes better use of bitrate (and your friends with 4:3 TVs will be able to watch them - though I suspect they'll wonder about the black bars

).

17th November 2001, 23:40	#2 \| Link
Kedirekin Registered User Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Minnesota Posts: 1,110	Wow. That is a whacky question. I think you're going to get a lot of feedback (most of it negative). I think the naive answer is simple enough - just crop 60 pixels (or is it 64?) off top and bottom and encode. For PAL, I guess it would be 72 pixels (or 77?). However, there are some things you should consider. I don't want to squash your enthusiasm, I just want you to be aware. - obviously, you'll be loosing some of the picture (unless you're cropping away black bars, which I think is the case with Enterprise - though I don't think the bars are that big) - you'll be cropping from a source that's already limited to about 480 (or 576) lines of resolution (broadcast). When you resize the cropped image back to 480 (or 576), you really won't gain anything in resolution/quality - most players don't support anamorphic SVCDs, despite the fact that it is in the spec. You may have to do a 'distorted' 4:3 encode and tell your TV to switch it to 16:9 (if your TV supports that). People with 4:3 TVs won't be able to watch these discs (or they can, but they'll be distorted) - alternatively, you could do a non-distorted 4:3 encode with black bars, and tell your 16:9 TV to resize the playback to full-width (if it supports that), thereby eliminating the black bars. This will achieve practically identical results, but makes better use of bitrate (and your friends with 4:3 TVs will be able to watch them - though I suspect they'll wonder about the black bars ). Last edited by Kedirekin; 17th November 2001 at 23:44.