Widescreen ?

[Arsenic]

Why would DVD2SVCD take a normal full screen movie and add borders and make it look like a widescreen? Meaning this, I noticed the movie aspect ratio was 16:9 (encoded at 4:3 with borders added). Is this the setting that is cramping the screen image into a widescreen looking movie?

Also when I do an already widescreen formatted it cuts it even further down to like almost 1/3 of the screen again adding what would appear to be more borders.

Am I supposed to choose 4:3 no borders or something?

Sorry to sound new but well I am and trying clean up the movies I made backups for in my other house.

Thx in advance.

[onesoul]

Originally posted by Arsenic
Am I supposed to choose 4:3 no borders or something? In the case you refer, yes.

You only use 16:9 with added bars or anamorphic if your source is 16:9 anamorphic.

Cheers

[markrb]

Please read the stickies before posting. They have been made for a reason.
If after reading them you still have a question then fine, but as of right now it appears you are in violation of rules 1 and 1a of the forum rules. Why are these the first rules you ask? Simply because it's the most often violated rule.

Have a read of this. It explains the size settings very well.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23668

Mark

[Arsenic]

Actually I did read this:
"On the conversion tab you will select the IFO off the DVD (Usually in Video_TS directory). Many times there is more then one. In this case the largest IFO is usually the correct one.

On DVD’s with multiple aspect ratios there will be two very close in size. One will be for the 4:3 encode and the other for the 16:9 encode. The only sure way is to pick one, rip the DVD to the Hard Drive with the rip only option, test it with a Software DVD player like WinDVD or PowerDVD 4.0, if you got the correct one load that IFO off the Hard Drive into CCE and continue and if you got the wrong one erase those files and pick the other IFO.
Once the correct IFO is loaded you can now make your selections as to what you want to do with the DVD.

Now you need to decide how you want the video to be encoded. There are three choices. DVD2SVCD reads the IFO and tries to make a choice, but sometimes this choice is not correct or what you want.

If you use the setting anamorphic(No borders, encode as 16:9) your DVD player must support this tag for SVCD's. Signs your DVD player does not support them include having the video stretched into 4:3 mode or having violent shaking in the video even on a 16:9 TV. If this happens you should not use this setting. It seems that more players do not support the tag then do. Even the old standby Apex units do not appear to support this tag.

If this happens and you have a widescreen TV you should continue to use 4:3(No borders, encode as 4:3) for you encodes that are to be dedicated. Otherwise only choose this if the video is fullscreen 4:3. You should also use this setting if the video is "letterbox". Generally these are onlder pre-anamorphic videos where the black bars are actually part of the video.

If you use a more standard 4:3 TV use 16:9 (borders added, encode as 4:3) for your 16:9 anamorphic videos. This is the most commonly used setting today.

Alternately you can read the excellent explanation by Nick:



quote:
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It all depends on what sort of TV you are going to be watching on.

Let us first take the example of a 4:3 TV with an anamorphic 16:9 DVD.

The DVD picture is 720 pixels wide and 576(PAL)(480 NTSC) deep. Something on the DVD tells your player it is in 16:9 format and when you set up your DVD player you will have told it in the setup menu that you have a 4:3 TV. Hence what your DVD player does is create a 4:3 output to send to the TV by squashing the image into the middle 432 lines and adds 72 lines of black top and bottom. These lines are not on the disc, they are added by your DVD player to create an output suitable for a 4:3 TV.

However, if you set up your DVD player telling it you have a widescreen TV it outputs the picture 16:9 exactly as it is on the disc.

Now let's move onto the conversion.

When we convert DVD to SVCD we have three options with the new build (Ignore the "Resize to " option in the Frameserver tab, we're talking conversion tab here).

Option 1: 16:9, borders added, encode as 4:3. This is exactly like the 16:9 tab in previous builds. What this does is make a disc which gives a 4:3 output by squashing the picture into the middle third and actually putting black bars on the disc, so the actual movie is contained in the middle 432 lines of the 576 available, the rest is black. When played on a 4:3 TV the result looks the same as when your DVD player added the bars when you played the original DVD. However, on a 16:9 widescreen TV the picture has to be stretched both horizontally and vertically to fill the screen. Pretty much every widescreen TV has picture zoom modes to do this but lots of stretching = poor picture quality.

Option 2: 4:3, no borders added, encode as 4:3. This is exactly like 4:3 in previous builds. This encodes a 4:3 disc with the full 576 line vertical resolution. Because the output from this disc in 4:3 the DVD player does not know to add black lines top and bottom to output to your 4:3 TV so the egghead effect ensues. Some TV's have picture modes to add black bars but the vast majority don't. However, played on a widescreen TV, you only have to stretch horizontally to fill the screen as it is already at full vertical resolution. Less stretching = better picture quality so if you will be watching on a widescreen TV this option is a winner.

Option 3: Anamorphic, no borders added, encoded as 16:9. This is the new option on 1.0.8b1. What this does is encode at full vertical resolution but put a marker on the disc just like the original DVD to tell your player that it is 16:9. Therefore if you set up your DVD player saying you have a widescreen TV, the DVD player outputs at full vertical resolution but if you set it for a 4:3 TV the player does the squashing up and adding of black bars. So you get the best of both worlds - perfect playback on either TV type.

The only problem is that it appears most standalone DVD players are incompatible with this new option and picture distortion results. Either which way, there is no need to resort to uninstalling this build and reinstalling an earlier version. If the 16:9 anamorphic option doesn't work for you simply don't use it! The other two options are exactly as per previous builds.
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"


However I must be really stupid b/c it didn't answer my question obviously since I still posted it.
I don't know vertical lines or anamorphic, I am just a regular joe trying to make some backups for my other house so when my nieces and nephews want to watch a movie, I don't feel stupid when the disc comes back with peanut butter and juice on it.

I think I got my answer tho, sorry I 'violated' the rules.

[waldok]

To sum it up, I would say :

- If your movie is 4:3, encode as 4:3 (no black bars added)

- If your movie is widescreen (be it 1.77:1 or 2.35:1) and your TV set is 4:3, encode as 16:9 (black bars added)

- If your movie is widescreen and your TV set is 16:9, either encode as 4:3 (always works with any DVD player) or as anamorphic (works on some DVD Players). No black bars in both cases and a nice full screen movie.

Don't ask me the "technical" difference between selecting 4:3 or anamorphic when you have a widescreen TV set, I still havent' figured it out myself (anybody knows ?) and both give good results on my 16:9 set.

Hope this helps a bit

Waldok:cool:

[RB]

I think the only technical difference is the flag in the MPEG stream that says "4:3" or "16:9". If you encode a 16:9 movie as 4:3 (no borders), you'll of course get egg heads on a 4:3 TV. But since your widescreen TV stretches the picture horizontally, it's OK.

[onesoul]

Rb is right, I just want to add that the flag in the mpeg file is detected at the pc player (which is nice as it stretches the picture automatically for you) but in general the stand alone player doesn't detect it (if someone has a dvd player which detects it, share with us please :)).

Cheers

[waldok]

Neither of my standalones detect the flag. I have to switch to 16:9 mode manually on my set.

So to say, apart from the flag, there is no difference using anamorphic or 4:3 in DVD2SVCD for a widescreen set ? Is it right ?
DVD2SVCD (the man, this time) maybe you can give some info on this ?

Waldok:cool:

[markrb]

This part of the Guide is what is happening:

If you use the setting anamorphic(No borders, encode as 16:9) your DVD player must support this tag for SVCD's. Signs your DVD player does not support them include having the video stretched into 4:3 mode or having violent shaking in the video even on a 16:9 TV. If this happens you should not use this setting. It seems that more players do not support the tag then do. Even the old standby Apex units do not appear to support this tag.

If this happens and you have a widescreen TV you should continue to use 4:3(No borders, encode as 4:3) for you encodes that are to be dedicated. Otherwise only choose this if the video is fullscreen 4:3. You should also use this setting if the video is "letterbox". Generally these are onlder pre-anamorphic videos where the black bars are actually part of the video.


Almost 90% of players that I have seen DO NOT work with anamorphic.
If you have a widescreen TV and your player does not support this tag then encode as 4:3 no borders added.

Mark

[onesoul]

Originally posted by markrb
If you have a widescreen TV and your player does not support this tag then encode as 4:3 no borders added. There's no harm done by encoding as 16:9 anamorphic even if the player doesn't support it. In fact it has the advantage of when you play at pc of the automatic stretching for proper vieweing of the picture.

edit: markrb is right, please disregard this post, sorry. My affirmation above only applies to the dvd players that even if they don't recognize the flag, they don't have any problems besides that. Thanks.

[waldok]

MArk, that's ok for saying when one shuold or shouldnot use the flag and I experimented it on some players that went nuts when this flag was set.
But my question was more to understand if choosing anamorphic in DVD2SVCD would anything else but setting the flag in the MPEG stream. And even then, what difference wil it make on a widescreen set compared to a movie encoded in 4:3 mode in DVD2SVCD.

To me, visually, there is no difference. Is there one for anybody round here ? There should be, otherwise I woudln't see why there would be a need for a anamorphic mode in DVD2SVCD. I remember having read long ago a very technical discussion about what anamorphic is exactly, but I can't find it anymore.

Any guru out there ? Just for my curiosity and to go to bed a bit more clever ;)

Waldok:cool:

[markrb]

All of the following assumes an anamorphic 16:9 source.

Anamorphic in simple terms, since that is all I know, is an automatic way to have the DVD player decide if borders need to be added or not. If this flag is set and your DVD player is set to output to a 4:3 TV then borders will be added by the DVD player when decoding the video to play. If the DVD player is set to play on a widescreen TV no borders are added by the DVD player.

By setting D2S(CCE) to do a 4:3 encode without adding borders you are stopping the DVD player from being able to make this choice since it thinks the video is already 4:3. On a 4:3 set this most likely forces the video to become streched to fit the entire screen.
However on widescreen TV there is no vertical stretching of the image or if there is it's very little.

The biggest problem with most players is that this flag is a DVD flag and not a VCD or SVCD flag. Most players become confused or outright ignore this flag. If the player becomes confused the video starts to act jumpy and will not play correctly. If the flag is ignored then the video is streteched as if no flag was set.

Foe widescreen TV's the most compatible format is to use 4:3 do not add borders.

Mark

[onesoul]

@waldok
Maybe you'll find this guide (http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm) from doom9 interesting.

Regards

[theblaze74]

Markrb,

I need a new DVD player. Are there any DVD players for sale that support anamorphic svcd?