DVD and 720x480 playback don't fit on TV? (overscan problem)

[TofuDawg]

Master Yoda, thanks for the infor very helpful. Let me ask you this, what is the easiest way to add the extra pixels to the top and bottom of my MPEG?

[LilY0da]

To display locally (no MVP) I'd say use AVISynth to write a script that adds the pixels, resizes, etc...
Now to send it to the MVP, you'll open the .avs file, and it'll be transcoded on the fly to a MPEG2 stream, which requires a lot of CPU, and is a bit unstable. But it's the easiest.

If you want stable and one file only (no need to keep the mpg and the avs files), you can also reencode to a MPEG2 after the border/resize operations. You can do that with FFMpeg, or other third party softwares like TMPGEnc. Just open the AVS with those tools and reencode to MPEG2. There will be a slight quality loss, but hopefully not too bad.

For help on video edition, http://www.videohelp.com, they have a guide for about anything...

[sabrewulf165]

Thanks for the very helpful posts, Yoda! Have you ever tried just adding the extra pixels and playing the MPEG on the MVP @ 720x540? Is there any way to do that without using an .AVS file or re-encoding the original MPEG?

[LilY0da]

the other way is to use FFDshow to resize your videos. I find it a lot less flexible than AVISynth, and a lot more intrusive in your system...

So I use AVS only, since I have a PHP script that analyzes video contents and generate the avs files accordingly.
You don't have to manually re-encode, you can leave it as a .avs file and select that file to play from the MVP. The thing is that in this case, GBPVR will transcode the .avs stream to a temporary MPEG2 file on the fly. You'd better have a seriously beefed up PC... My Athlon XP 3000+ is barely able to do that on a 640x480 .avs output...

I haven't tried 720x540 on the MVP. My PC would definitely die trying to transcode a video that big to a MPEG2 stream to feed to the MVP ...
Let me know if you try it and it works.

[TobyO]

Are you sure you guys aren't over analysing this. I had a similar problem watching videos on the MVP, but not on the PC. I took tipster advice:
1)installed Hauppauge MVP server software.
2)Stop the gbpvr
3)restarted the MVP to hook up with Hauppauge MVP server
4)went into the settings window then into the configuration menu and change the 4:3 ratio to 16:9 (on the MVP).
5)applied changes
6)Stop the Hauppauge server software
7)restarted gbpvr
8) restarted MVP

played star wars II (WS) and saw everthing .

I'm a newbie and sorry if you have tried the already , but it seem easier then recoding your entire video lib.

TobyO

[TofuDawg]

Alright little green fella. Let me get this straight.

Convert MPG to AVI.
Use AVISynth to add borders
Convert AVI to MPG

Sounds like building the Death Star took fewer steps.

[TofuDawg]

TobyO...I am testing this stuff without a TV Tuner card. Once I sell enough blood plasma, my wife will let me buy one. How does the MVP work, when set to Widescreen, with the Live TV? Does it play that back at 4:3 without any problems? I don't want to have to switch the settings depending on what I am watching. Thanks.

I just tried switching to Widescreen, and my MPG movie was stretched vertically.

[LilY0da]

Convert MPG to AVI. -> not needed. Instead, the first line of your AVISynth script will be to open the MPG file
Use AVISynth to add borders -> yes, . I think the script command is AddBorders(x,y,l,r), or something like that. AVISynth's doc is pretty good, so you'll have to play around with it. You can test the result by simply opening the .avs file in windows media player
Convert AVI to MPG -> needed only if you want to permanently store a modified MPEG2 locally. If you don't, GBPVR will transcode the output of the AVS directly into a temporary MPEG2

Sounds like building the Death Star took fewer steps.

You should have seen before AVISynth! We had to manually add the border filters etc in tools like virtualdub

[TobyO]

TofuDawg,
A good question. I did not notices any differents when playing WS movies or live TV. So I'm going to say no you don't need to switch back and fourth depending on what you are doing.Just set it to 16:9 ratio and forgett it . Most of my DVD movies where tranfer with "my video" and DVD2mpeg with in gbpvr.

PS I have 350 and 150 in my server and love them both

TobyO

[TofuDawg]

TobyO,
So no stretching of widescreen movies on 16:9? I follow the steps you had exactly to switch mine, but my 720 x 480 mpeg still gets stretched.