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View Full Version : Anamorphic encoding question


dread
19th February 2004, 14:41
I'm planning to buy a hardware MPEG-4 player in the near future... when exactly ? When there will be support for anamorphic mp4's and HE AAC, I guess it can take a while but this is not what I'm asking for.

I'm curious how to create anamorphic screen which will be playable with correct AR by hardware players on 16:9 TV.

To retain anamorphic resolution from DVD and make it correctly playable on 4:3 I'm cropping black bars - for 2.35:1 movies it's something around 720x432 after crop, then encode to xvid with given AR to mp4 and that's all. Everything is fine.

But what about 16:9 TV's ? Should I also crop black bars or maybe leave it alone as it's in original to make it correctly playable on 16:9 TV ?
I'm asking because while watching anamorphic movies on 16:9 TV through my tvout, cropped movies (720x432) plays with bad AR - it's something around 2.80:1, and movies with black bars plays flawlessly (original 720x576).

SeeMoreDigital
24th February 2004, 17:40
It's impossible to say at the moment.

As far as I know, none of the current Mpeg4 'standalone' manufacturers have released any information about possible firmware upgrades for existing players or if new players will support the MP4 container!

It's still a bit of a mess and a mystery. Especially when you consider, most if not all Sigma chipset based players could support this feature quite easily, as it's already included with their Xcard PCI card product!

Cheers