Aspect Ratio Parameters

[vintdiesel]

When I transcode SOME programs off the PRIME channel I get a letterbox and pillar box combination (black bars all sides). As a quick fix util I get to the root of the problem I thought of adding an new aspect ratio called Zoom1 in config.xml in the 16:9 area.

<AspectRatioMode name="Zoom1">w,x,y,z</AspectRatioMode>

Can someone enlighten me what the parameters w,x,y,z affect? I am guessing they are zoom and offset numbers for the horizontal and vertical.

[sub]

w,x = top left (w is horizontal position, x is vertical position)
y,z = bottom right (y is horizontal position, z is vertical position)

All values are in the range 0 to 1.

ie, 0,0,1,1 would be the full screen. 0.5,0,1,1 would be the eight hand side of the screen (0.5,0 = half way across the top of the screen for the top left corner).

[Reddwarf]

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ght=Aspect

[vintdiesel]

Thanks guys, I thought it may have been posted before but when I searched for "aspect ratio" I got too many hits to find what I was looking for.

I had recently added the Overscan option <AspectRatioMode name="Overscan">-0.03,-0.03,1.03,1.03</AspectRatioMode> that imilne posted a week ago which worked a treat on "Extreme Makeover" on TV2 as that is in 4:3 format as there was a bit of rubbish top and bottom of the 16:9 screen.

I tried to interpet the negative values and the numbers >1.0 but failed the mensa test. So I am gathering from this example, the top left of the picture is drawn slightly outside of the top left of the screen (negative values) and the bottom right of the picture is drawn slightly off the bottom right of the screen (>1) hence the top and bottom of the 4:3 image gets slightly cropped.

[johnsonx42]

for that situation I use this setting: <AspectRatioMode name="Zoom">-0.17,-0.15,1.17,1.15</AspectRatioMode>

[vintdiesel]

Thanks for that, I shall try that too and see which one fits best!

[Pat Clark]

Changing these values has no effect whatsoever on my LCD via HDMI screen. With any values, TV reports it is getting a 1920x1080 Progressive Scan signal, but there is always an inch or so of black that is unoccupied. Using the TV's tuner fills the screen completely. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't report what signal it's displaying when in that mode.

I'm not overly concerned about the "wasted" screen space so much as whether there is unnecessary video scaling going on somewhere along the line.

[imilne]

Check your graphics card's driver settings for underscan/overscan options. ATI ones certainly underscan quite severely on first install.

Iain

[jcjefferies]

It can get complicated when both the TV and graphics driver have various options to change the size so you can end up with them working against each other. Using my old Samsung TV I filled the screen using the Nvidia driver function. However my new Sharp TV has Auto as the default screen zoom which sometimes gave too much zoom and at other times the picture did not fill the screen. The solution was to use the default Nvidia settings and set the particular input to 16:9 zoom instead of Auto.

[Pat Clark]

Check your graphics card's driver settings for underscan/overscan options. ATI ones certainly underscan quite severely on first install.

Iain

I lost the ability to control my video chip (on motherboard) after "upgrading" the drivers. ATI installed some much less capable Catalyst Control Center which does absolutely nothing useful. Can't figure out how to get the old one back, and don't know how else to do it. The Windows stuff seems to be for color, etc only.

The TV has no options for HDMI input that I've found, so I don't know what it's doing. (1-year old Vizeo, 120 Hz)