Problems with "pan & scan" setting for 4:3

[colinb]

I have authored a DVD which contains two titles. Both are 16:9. But the second one is actually 4:3 pillarboxed within the 16:9 frame - i.e. it has black areas to the left and right.

When played on a 4:3 TV set, I want the first title to be displayed letterboxed and the second to be displayed as full screen (no black borders at all).

After a bit of trawling I found a couple of posts explaining how to use IfoEdit to make the pillarboxed 4:3 appear full screen on a 4:3 television screen. This involved editing the "_TS" and "_02" VOB files and adding the "Automatic pan & scan" option to the existing "Automatic letterboxed" option for the second title.

However, when I play it on my Panasonic E55 both titles still display as letterboxed. The settings menu just has two options for a 4:3 output:

4:3
letterboxed

Both of these settings just result in both titles displayed as letterboxed.

Have I missed something?

Also, why do BOTH the "pan & scan" and "letterboxed" options have to be ticked if you are sure you want to force the player to use only pan & scan (centre cropped)?

[frank]

The second title must be pan & scan, and your player setup must match!

[mpucoder]

Remove the automatic letterbox from the second titleset (the one with the pillar-boxed video). If both auto-letterbox and auto-panscan modes are enabled the DVD Player chooses which one based on a preference (which many players allow you to set). If only one mode is enabled it will be used.

[colinb]

Thanks. I'll try removing the "Automatic letterboxed" setting as you suggest.

Just to confirm, the "4:3" option I mentioned is described in the manual as "Video recorded for a widescreen is played as Pan & Scan (unless prohibited by the producer of the disc)". Presumably the prohibition is the absence of the "automatic pan & scan" flag in the title set. This seems to be exactly what I want.

It seems odd that with this "4:3" option chosen in the DVD player, and the "automatic pan & scan" and "automatic letterboxed" options set in the files that the player should still display as letterboxed.

Perhaps the player is just looking at the settings on the first title set and using it for the whole disk? It would be pretty poor if this was true.

Or maybe there's another flag somewhere else that I've missed. The instructions I found say the following:

You can change a video from "16:9 only" to "16:9 and p&s" quite easily using ifoedit. You open the Video_ts.ifo file and find the Title Set relating to your film (e.g. if your film relates Vts_06_0.vob etc. then you choose Title Set 6) and then double click on the section relating to the Video (e.g. "VTS_6 Video: MPEG-2 720x576 (PAL) (PAL 625/50) (16:9) (letterboxed)"). In the "static" section of the window that pops up it should have Automatic Letterboxed already selected and all you need to do is tick Automatic Pan&Scan as well. Save the ifo and then open the relevant ifo (e.g. Vts_06_0.ifo) for the Title Set you just altered and make sure you tick the same Automatic Pan&Scan box in the Video attributes section for the Title Set again. Save this ifo too and voila!

[mpucoder]

Presumably the prohibition is the absence of the "automatic pan & scan" flag in the title set. correct - well, actually the flag is set to "1" to prohibit and "0" to allow.
It seems odd that with this "4:3" option chosen in the DVD player, and the "automatic pan & scan" and "automatic letterboxed" options set in the files that the player should still display as letterboxed. Most players let you set the mode to be used given a choice - check the setup menu of your player.

[colinb]

Most players let you set the mode to be used given a choice - check the setup menu of your player.

Yes and both of those still display both title sets on the screen as letterboxed, regardless of which one I select in the player menu.

The player has only two settings for a 4:3 TV. This is from the user manual:


4:3 - Video recorded for a widescreen is played as Pan & Scan (unless prohibited by the producer of the disc)
letterboxed - Widescreen picture is shown in the letterbox style


Anyway I'll try removing the "Automatic letterboxed" flag from the second title set and see what happens.

Actually, as my DVD has two title sets, there is an overall VMG menu which is 16:9. Presumably there must be some setting which tells the player whether it can use pan and scan or letterboxed for the VMG menu. As it is not within any one VTS then wouldn't there be another flag somewhere for the VMG? If so, maybe that overrides the flags within the VTS's?

[mpucoder]

VMG has its own flags. Also the menu and title domains of each titleset (VTS) have seperate video attributes.

[colinb]

I'll do some test builds over the weekend using various combinations of flags. I'll also see if I can find the VMG flags in IfoEdit.

[r0lZ]

You can use PgcEdit to change the video attributes easily. Just right-click on any PGC of the domain, and select Domain Streams Attributes.

If you want to do it with IfoEdit, look in the VMGM_MAT table.

[colinb]

Disabling letterboxed and enabling pan and scan with IfoEdit solved the problem.

Not sure why my player was still chosing letterboxed when I set it to pan and scan, but it seems to work with the above IFO setting.