16:9 anamorphic VCDs--has anyone tried?

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Yo!

I've just made me a VCD with a regular standard 1x CD speed video stream. The only thing I made different was the aspect ratio: I squeezed it into the width/height pixel size needed for a 16:9 picture.

Does anyone know how players react to this? I figured they would either refuse playing the stream altogether or play it squeezed back into 4:3 (which one wouldn't mind if one had a 16:9 TV set) or, in an ideal world, at least some DVD players would recognize the anamorphic format and play it right.

WinOnCD wouldn't complain about the stream, and the Media Player wouldn't mind the *.dat file's settings, either, naturally. But DVD software reacted surprisingly unpredictable.

Cinemaster would ignore the aspect ratio. PowerDVD would recognize it but wouldn't play the sound.

Have any of you tried such a home-made VCD on set-top boxes (CD-i, DVD, ...) yet? If you did, what did they do?

Thanks for any info.

-- Ulrich Schreglmann (ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de), May 26, 2000

Answers

I do not clearly get the part about "squeezing into a 16:9" ratio. Does this mean it's not 352x240 or 352x288?? I regularly create widescreen VCDs. These VCDs are still conventionally 352x240/288 but are anamorphic so that they are viewed corectly with a 16:9 TV or a 4:3 TV that has a widescreen function (the picture is squeezed vertically to 16:9). I do this when I get to use a Cannon DV camcorder GL1 which can provide this 16:9 anamorphic picture; I figured that on most 4:3 TVs nowadays the widescreen function is standard. In fact I use a 5-year old 4:3 Sony KVF29MT that has this function and is a perfect match for anamorphic DVDs, so why not the VCDs I create? What I am still researching on is this: this Sony TV has an auto-widescreen function; when viewing broadcasts or VHS the picture is 4:3 but when I select the DVD anamorphic output the TV automatically switches to 16:9. If I play an anamorphic VCD or for that matter an anamorphic VHS tape the TV doesn't automatically switch to 16:9; I have to deliberately switch it to that. The only connection between the set-top and TV is the one S-video cable. Clearly when the DVD set-top is playing an anamorphic DVD in that mode there is a code (in the sync, perhaps?) that gets sent to the Sony that causes it automatically choose 16:9. Whatever this code is I do not know but certainly it isn't present when playing anamorphic 16:9 VCDs or VHS tapes. Lastly, when playing these VCDs on the PC there are no problems except from the long, thin faces, but this can be corrected by using a S/w player like Xing, which allows resizing of the picture vertically and horizontally independently.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), May 27, 2000.

I've never heard of a TV that switches to 16:9, manually or automatically. Not here in Germany anyway. Well, anyway...

You can change the pixel aspect ratios using the MPEG Fixer program. The pixel width/height ratios for 352x240 resp. 352x288 are:

1.0950 @ NTSC 4:3 0.9157 @ PAL 4:3 0.8437 @ NTSC 16:9 0.7031 @ PAL 16:9

When I encoded the image anamorphic I changed the pixel size to the last of the four so the computer would display it right at full screen. When you use the Panasonic MPEG encoder you have to do that for PAL streams anyway, because it erroneously sets it to the NTSC ratio even when you choose PAL.

But the DVD software would behave erratically at #4, because #1 and #2 are, AFAIK, the only correct aspect ratios for VCDs.

That's why I was wondering how set-top boxes would react.

-- Ulrich Schreglmann (ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de), May 27, 2000.


Try the Loewe range of TV's, I use one for manually choosing 16:9 to play anamorphic VCD's and now SVCD's or you can make letterbox VCD's direct. I think Grundig does as well. Check out my site for a couple of examples and some notes:

http://Aussie01.freeservers.com

-- Ross McLennan (rmclennan@esc.net.au), May 28, 2000.


or on the other hand re-encode with TMPenc set to 16x9 pal and it makes a 4x3 pictuer with letterboxes..... give it a go

-- dave richman (shadowlands2000@hotmail.com), December 29, 2001.

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