I want to frameserve and audioserve at same time!

[dvdyke]

OK here is what I want to do. I want to be able to playback Avisynth .AVS files in Media Player as well as serve the audio from the SVCD formatted .MPG file. Why? Because I wanted to be able to crop the black borders on widescreen SVCD's to output from my G400 dual head video card to my widescreen TV in a scaled zoom (Rather than zoom the TV itself which looks ugly and shows scanlines). I have no other method to crop the black bars. DiVXG400 a third party utility does this for DiVX movies and MPEG1 movies but not for MPEG2 for some reason.
If I playback a DiVX movie that has already been cropped it looks great! I have some SVCD's I'd like to force output to a cropped format. I noted that if I ran an SVCD through DVD2AVI and then in GKnot cropped it and previewed the video playback it would output to the TV in the correct way (Looks like a fake anamorphic squeeze on a widescreen TV for those that know about such things).

Trouble is. NO SOUND! There must be a way to serve the audio from the MPG file at the same time as the video is surely?

The only other alterantive of course is to convert the SVCD's to DiVX which I would rather not do due to quality loss.

I thought about the VFAPI method also but apart from the RGB thing which slows things down it means extracting the audio into WAV files and using VFAPI to put that audio into the VFP project file. Not good. Don't know whether it would accept MP2 files. Do not think so.

So if anyone has a way to playback a Avisynth .AVS file in Media Player and get audio from the SVCD .MPG file at the same time I would much appreciate it! :)

Thanks!

[Bugs Bunny]

Er, have another instance of Media Player playing the MPG at the same time, but minimized?

Seriously, IIRC, AVSynth allows you to frameserve audio along with the video. You've tried this, right?

[dvdyke]

Yup! But you have to extract the audio to a wave file 1st and then I get sync problems.

I want to be able to serve the audio directly from the source like you can if you use DVD2AVI -> Avisynth .AVS file played back in any .AVI supporting player.

[dvdyke]

Err...that should read like you can with video using Avisynth.

[Bugs Bunny]

Hmm, OK, I think this should work, and you don't have to do anything extra like an AVI proxy.. I tried this on my system and it works, even though I don't have a 16:9 TV set.

Switch your computer resolution to 1280x720, which is 16:9 to match your TV set. Then play the SVCD with PowerDVD XP, right-click to access menu. Disable "Keep aspect ratio." Select Pan & Scan, and enable 2.35:1. This'll give a full-screen image w/o the black bars on your computer, which by all rights should do the same for your TV, except that it'll be the correct AR on the 16:9 TV.

[dvdyke]

A Matrox card does not work that way. Other video cards do this. They display the image on the desktop and pipe that image to the TV. Mine cane do this but it looks like shit compared to what the Matrox cards can do which is pipe the video DIRECT to the secondary head (Not just display the desktop on the secondary head) using overlay. It's called DVDMax mode. I can have video in a window or even minimized to the taskbar and it still pipes out fullscreen to the TV on the secondary head. Means I can do anything I like on the computer while it still plays the movie on the TV out. What you are suggesting as I can see it is displaying the movie as a fullscreen desktop which is less quality (Incorrect colors too) at a weird screen ratio and let the TV squeeze it back down. Sorry but that's no good to me. Thus I need to be able to video serve AND audio serve at the same time.

[Bugs Bunny]

The concept is the same regardless of whether the video stream is taken from the computer desktop or going directly to the TV. I'm not sure if you fully understand what I'm trying to say: Your problem is that you want to get rid of the black bars, so you can have an optimal picture on your TV. I'm telling you that PowerDVD crops the image when you enable the 2.35:1 AR function. With 2.35, I get an edge-to-edge image in a 16:9 res, so it should be the same way when routed to a 16:9 TV.

Frankly, I'm a bit mystified by your insistence of audio serving. You are being overly technical when there's no need to. The simple answer is to find a player with cropping. Why do you stick with the most limited player available, then try to find ways to trick it? Why not just use a better player? Oh, well, whatever works for you then.

[dvdyke]

That does not work. In PowerDVD XP if I go fullscreen, turn off keep aspect ratio and use pan & scan to 2.35:1 all that happens is that the sides get chopped off and it is zoomed to 4:3. I don't know how you choose a 16:9 ratio on the monitor either as it is not an option under the desktop properties.

[dvdyke]

From reading you last post 'edge to edge' it sounds like you are pan & scanning. I want to remove the top and bottom bars in order to get a fake anamorphic squeeze from overlay which is different.

[Bugs Bunny]

>From reading you last post 'edge to edge' it sounds like you are pan & scanning. I want to remove the top and bottom bars in order to get a fake anamorphic squeeze from overlay which is different.


P&S means a bit different than the normal definition. Since we're dealing with a 4:3 image (which is what SVCD is), PowerDVD will crop top & bottom, and may be the sides, to achieve the specified AR.

I don't know how DVDMax does it, but for an ATI, you can specify independent res & refresh rates for each vid-out. I select 16:9 by specifying 1280x720 res, which is to my knowledge a commonly available res. If you leave the screen res at 4:3, then yeah, you will lose a lot from the sides. Regardless of whether output is piped directly to the TV, PowerDVD still depends on the screen res for its AR adjustments. If DVDMax is just a straight TV pipe that doesn't allow for screen res change, then this will not work.

Correction from my earlier post: You'd want to use the 1.85:1 AR, which most closely conforms to 16:9 (1.67:1). You'll lose a sliver from the sides, but it isn't perceptible. On my system, I had to disable "Keep aspect ratio" or else it will keep the black bar.