Can anyone explain why the SVCD format for PAL is 480x576? Full screen PAL is 720x576 = so why is only the horizontal dimension reduced?. It produces a rather 'rectangular' picture when played on a PC (before going to SVCD format - although we've not yet produced a Super VCD CD)

Regards,

Anthony Bouch

-- Anthony Bouch (agb@loxinfo.co.th), April 08, 2000

Answers

Yes, the image on PC screen is a vertical rectangle. This is because the PC world uses a 'square' pixel to display any image on the screen. You have to consider that when you create objects with a correct aspect ratio, like circles and squares. The aspect ratio, I'll refresh, is 4/3, so 800x600 resolution is a perfect example. In the TV environment, the concept of 'pixel' does not exist, mainly because the signal in sent to the TV set in an analog form. You have simply to spread the pixels in one line of your image between 2 Horizontal Sync pulses, so the number of original image pixels just influence the quality of the image (you can say 'horizontal resolution'). This mechanism is done by the DVD or SVCD player, which MUST produce a PAL standard video signal.

-- luigi (luigibra@libero.it), November 03, 2000.

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