Widescreen & SVCD

lvildosola wrote on 2/24/2002, 11:08 PM
As some of you may know, when using the Canon GL-1's 16:9 mode the recorded image is vertically stretched (or horizontally squeezed, whichever you prefer) on each 720x480-pixel frame. The result is a pseudo-anamorphic frame. What I would like to do is to transfer the video I shoot in 16:9 mode to SVCD so that my DVD player can recognize it as anamorphic and therefore letterbox the video if I select a 4:3 television as the display device. This way, when I play back the same video in a 16:9 television I would let it perform the proper streching, as opposed to relying on the DVD player to letterbox the image.

What I am looking for is someone who has been able to accomplish what I am trying to do and help me out a little. I am sure that it is a matter of some of the settings I am using.

Comments

lvildosola wrote on 2/26/2002, 4:44 PM
Someone must be authoring widescreen videos. Instead of authoring to SVCD, is there someone out there authoring to DVD? How do you properly encode the aspect ratio so that the DVD player will take care of letterboxing an anamorphic source?
MHampton wrote on 2/26/2002, 5:03 PM
I have tested this with VF and TMPEGENC and got it to actually work. Here is what I did.

Set your project properties to 720x480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.1850. Render to AVI DV format.

Then tell TMPEGENC that both input and output are 16x9. I used MyDVD 2.3 and created a 16x9 project there, imported the MPEG2 file and burned the DVD. Tested on my 16x9 TV and it fully filled the screen. Tested on my 4x3 tv and it was letterboxed, just like the professional DVDs!

It took some work to figure it all out, but once I did, it actually worked for my DVD. I would think it would work for SVCD as well since it is the mpeg file which is tagged as 16x9.
SonyEPM wrote on 2/26/2002, 5:05 PM
If you set the Vegas MPEG-2 custom settings to 16:9, and author a widescreen DVD or cDVD, you should be set-
lvildosola wrote on 2/27/2002, 7:27 AM
Thank you so much for the info. I tried it last night and I still can't get it to work. I think that the problem stems from the fact that SVCD is 480x480 whereas DVD is 720x480. I have tried different settings in TMPGEnc. I think that the problem lies in the "Video Arrange Method". Could you tell me what template you use for your encoding using TMPGEnc?

I also wanted to ask you how you came up with the pixel aspect ratio of 1.1850.
MHampton wrote on 2/27/2002, 7:59 AM
Actualy, I guess that should be 1.85. I got it from http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/index.html which is the "Dummies guide to Anamorphic widescreen". :) 1.85:1 = 16:9 rounded down to a 1 denominator. From there, I played around with it until it looked right. A bit of trial and error.

According to that site, the ratio of a standiard 16x9 tv is 1.78:1, the acadamey flat movies are 1.85:1, and the Anamorphic Scope movies are 2.35:1 ratios.
lvildosola wrote on 2/27/2002, 8:48 AM
I see. You are using the aspect ratio to mean the pixel aspect ratio, which are different. Nevertheless, your trial and error works fine with 16:9 images coming from a GL-1 since it adds a black border on the top and bottom of the image. This border happens to match the side borders that come from natively from the GL-1. Cool. I thought you did this on purpose so that you can have an AVI that can be used for both authoring to TV and for web distribution. ;-)

Thank you for your help so far. I will keep chopping at it and see what I come up with. I now know that rendering from Vegas will not work for what I need. At least not for SVCD. I have tried many combinations and it just does not do it. I will continue experimenting with TMPGEnc and see what comes out.