I have widescreen movies with MPEG format (high-def, muxed from mkv files) however whenever i wnat 2 play them on my extender it comes in 4:3 and sometimes changing the Zoom doesnt help. Is there any program to add a black border around the widescreen video format? or better of - a way for the extender to recognize the aspect ratio
here is a lame representation of what i mean. Hopefully someone would be able to help me now. Please ask if something is unclear.
image 1, shows the orginal aspect ratio of the video (2.40:1). Image 2, shows how the video is shown on an extender (xbox 360) with "Zoom 1", and image 3 shows it with zoom 3. The oragne lines show the aspect ratio of my TV screen (1.85:1)
So my question is how to make the extender read the orginal aspect ratio of the video, not streching it to 4:3. Or a tool that will simply add black pixels to the file.
Richard Miller MCE MVP
The problem here actually isn't Media Center, its an unfortunate thing which people tend to do when encoding videos (including some cable networks). When we talk about aspect ratio we're talking about the aspect ratio of the video picture. Now what you have is people encoding black bars into programs so that the aspect ratio in 4.3 will correctly display the full 16x9 picture for instance, with black bars on of course though. Some TV's and devices can make attempts to try and fix this by detecting the black bars and removing them.
In most cases though your going to find you have trouble with any video which is broadcasting a video with blackbars actually in the video. Its really hard to try and explain this clearly I hope this makes sense.
I'll give you an example of when zoom won't work. For instance I recorded Family Guy which was broadcasted in 4:3 over a digital channel. However it really wasn't broadcast in 4:3 at all. It looks like it, it has big black bars at each side. It looks correct on a normal 4:3 tube TV, and on my widescreen 16:9 it has black bars. There-fore you would assume its 4:3. It actually isn't, its been broadcast in 16:9 with the black bars as part of the actual picture. the 4:3 tv doesn't care as it simply cuts it off, the widescreen however shows it, you can't zoom it or stretch it because it already thinks its the right format!
You can actually see clues of this on some channels as channel providers have started putting their network logo in the black bars outside of the main picture.
pdj:RIght, but how could it be explainded if my vista machine displays the video correctly and the extender streches that video to its frame-box. I can transcode that video uisng transcode 360 and it will display correctly. but ofcourse that is not what Im tring to do. I dont want to transcode.
What is the size of the screen on your Vista machine, widescreen ?
Ok I see what your saying, thats strange though I don't have this experience with any of my 360's that I'm aware of. I'll play around tonight.
So I can emulate your setup, can you link me a small video clip to use to test it and also can you check your 360 video settings and find out what aspect and resolution your set to run at.
Thanks
Steve
here's another screenshot, just to hopefully show my point clear. its really hard to explain
here;s the url where the clip is located. http://cid-8b2a08581ed50e70.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/National.Treasure.IISample.mpg
and regarding the 'resolution' of xbox 360, where do I change that?
pdj: here;s the url where the clip is located. http://cid-8b2a08581ed50e70.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/National.Treasure.IISample.mpg and regarding the 'resolution' of xbox 360, where do I change that?
I downloaded your “sample.mpg” and you are correct the zoom does not work correctly on the Xbox360 with a 16x9 widescreen.
Where did you get this mpg, is it a renamed vob file?
RSS - Ian's Blog
RSS - All content
RSS - The Media Center Show
Subscribe via iTunes
Subscribe with Zune
Twitter