Anamorphic Playback

[LiFe]

Can anyone confirm that Anamorphic playback in Real Player is working? It worked when I initially encoded the file and used Real Change Display Tool to resize it. I've since upgraded to RealPlayer 10.5, and now the player just crashes.

Normal content plays fine.

LiFe.

[LiFe]

Dear god I hate RealPlayer right now.

So now it's stopped crashing (nothing's changed) and it's playing the file.

I drag RealPlayer onto the second monitor (TV Out) and hit theatre mode - and whallah, fscking thing jumps to theatre mode on primary monitor.

All other content will play in theatre mode on secondary screen except real content, which all jumps onto the primary display.

Onya again Real Guys. How do I fix this?

LiFe.

[LiFe]

Oh look. Now it's started crashing again. FSCK!

Hmm, this is spelling the end of Real for me.

LiFe.

[karl_lillevold]

You should stop using RealPlayer if it is causing you so much pain. Dual monitor support is probably not well implemented in it.

With realmediasplitter you can choose any DirectShow player you like: MPC, ZoomPlayer, BSplayer, even WiMP (if you must).. And with DirectShow, dual monitor support should not be a problem.

[LiFe]

RealMedia Splitter uses the same code as MPC AFAIK. Neither support anamorphic (4 little B&W windows come up and player crashes after a time).

If third party tools support a propriety codec better than the developers, it's a worry, and not a favourable outlook for the developers or the format.

[karl_lillevold]

realmediasplitter with anamorphic playback seems to work for almost everyone else, so I am not sure what your problem could be... Maybe someone else has some advice..

Now, with the resources Microsoft has put into DirectShow, I am not surprised their dual monitor support on Windows might be better than ours. With limited resources, I am sure the ones that prioritize where the effort is being spent improving RealPlayer has this on their list of areas to work on.

[LiFe]

I worked it out - doesn't play if you reduce the frame size for playback. Works if you increase the reverse framesize to correct aspect ratio by scaling up (instead of down).

Sounds like a stupid bug.

LiFe.

[karl_lillevold]

Glad to hear! In fact, that's the same conclusion we came to in this thread a few days ago:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85495
For me, shrinking the video crashed MPC, but not RealPlayer. For digidragon it crashed both. In any case, not really an important bug, since it makes more sense to increase the width than shrink the height. If you shrink the height, you lose resolution.

[LiFe]

Actually it's makes no more sense than increasing the width, reducing quality by scaling larger.

Would like to see the MPC and RealOne bugs fixed. They're a pain in the arse.

LiFe.

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by LiFe
Actually it's makes no more sense than increasing the width, reducing quality by scaling larger
Not always true. If you shrink the height, then play back at 1x, you lose resolution vertically. If you increase the width and play back at 1x, at you preserve the vertical resolution, and nothing is gained or lost horizontally. If you shrink the height (if it had been possible), then play full screen, it does not matter whether you shrink height or increase width, since the video card should be smart enough not to first downsample, then upsample.