stretched heads

[eichi]

hallo,
i am really new in converting avi to mpg.
i have an avi and tryed to make a svcd with tmpgenc.
but after finish encoding, the heads of the people are stretched
in vertical direction.
i have tryed 16:9 and 1:1 aspect ratio.
what's the secret?
if it's importand, i used the wizard that comes when starting tmpgenc
and made no extra settings except setting the file size to 100% of
disk capacity.

can someone give me a short lesson solving my problem???

eichi

[Rockas]

If you chose 16:9 the final result is to be seen on a 16:9 screen... If u want to see it on a 4:3 screen this is the format tha you need to choose.

[Nick]

Are you actually using the software DVD2SVCD to do your conversion? If not, you've posted this in the wrong forum!

However, you might like to try the guide on the doom9 site for AVI -> SVCD using DVD2SVCD. If your AVI has square pixels (most movie conversions etc are square pixel) this should solve your resizing issues.

Cheers
Nick

[Rockas]

You're right Nick... but for people that come here (for the first time) the Thread's title is confusing... "dvd2svcd (the program not the act") should be the title :D

[eichi]

thx for your replies.
i used tmpgenc, because dvd2avi said: audioformat not supported.
only ac2, mp2, mp2 and pcm supported.
i will try nick's idea following the guide he wrote about.
but left me one question: what are these sqare pixels.
i dont't understand what this means for movies and converting them.

eichi

[Nick]

Square pixels. OK, here goes. From the beginning.

Pictures in digital video files are made up of a matrix of pixels. Let us take the example of a 4:3 TV show an NTSC SVCD. The video resolution (ie the size of this matrix) is 480 x 480 as set by SVCD specifications. Therefore if each of these dots were square, the picture would be square too! Hence it follows that for this movie to be 4:3, each pixel has to be slightly wider than high to make this 4:3 show look right on your TV.

Now lets look at your computer screen. This is made up of square pixels. Monitors are normally 4:3, and the choices of resolution offered by Windows reflects this - 640x480, 800x600 etc are all multiples of 4:3. Therefore on your monitor screen each dot is square and for every 3 dots down, there are four dots across. Now, AVI's are not governed by resolution specifications like DVD's or (S)VCD's - you can pick any resolution you like. So if you want a 4:3 AVI clip to look right on your computer, you would come up with a resolution which fits, ie. a multiple of 4:3 eg 320x240.

AVI's made by video capturing software, however, tend to be different. These softwares assume that you will capture, edit, then store on DVD, (S)VCD etc. Therefore they capture at target resolution, eg an 4:3 NTSC TV show intended for SVCD would be captured at 480x480. Thus it would need no resizing for conversion. However, because Windows Media Player assumes AVI files have square pixels, if you played this captured file in WMP it would be square, not 4:3.

If you choose the AVI2SVCD mode in DVD2SVCD, the maths for resizing is done for you but this maths assumes your AVI has square pixels. If in the aspect ratio box you choose "16:9, Add borders, encode as 4:3" it will resize any square-pixel file for 4:3 output - ideal for SVCD. However, if the avi file was not intended to be watched with square pixels, the maths will be wrong and the resizing will be incorrect.

So basically if your AVI looks fine in Media Player, it should convert fine. If not we can discuss how to resize manually.

Hope this clears things up
Nick