Cainam
02-13-2006, 11:58 AM
I have an "aspect ratio" question I hope someone can help with.
I have Sky Digital and a widescreen TV, so I have set the TV type to widescreen in the Sky Menu. I have set the TV aspect on my Panasonic TV to "4:3". Tivo records the Sky signal quite happily, and when I play the recording back on the TV, if the broadcast was widescreen the TV automatically switches to widescreen mode, and I get the correct picture. If the recording was in 4:3, the TV stays in 4:3 mode, and I get black bars at the side, but the picture looks 'normal'.
So far so good. But I also have a portable Archos player (AV420, great piece of kit, my second favoutite gadget buy after Tivo). And this has a 4:3 screen.
The problem is that when I record from the VCR out socket on Tivo into the Archos, the Archos auto-detects it as a 4:3 picture, and it tries to display the full picture by squashing it all up (i.e. people's faces are really long and thin). If I choose the 16:9 option, it simply tries to crop the top and bottom of the picture, so what I can see is still squashed, and I am missing part of the picture anyway.
Reading round some of the Archos forums people seems to suggest that I should change the Sky box to output letterbox 4:3. Then when it plays back it plays backs as a 4:3 image, and the Archos displays it correctly. But I do not want to do this, as most things I watch on the TV, and I want to keep them on the Tivo in a widescreen format.
The only way I have found round this is as follows:
1) Record the film from Tivo choosing the 4:3 setting on Archos. It saves it as a 512x384 resolution avi file
2) Copy the .avi file from the Archos to my PC
3) Using virtualDub, load the resize filter, and reduce the resolution to 512x288 (this stretches the picture so it is now in a 16:9 format i.e. 1.7777777778 to 1)
4) Still in the resize filter, then choose to create a letterbox image by increasing the image size back to 512x384 (so it adds the black bars at top and bottom)
5) Let virtualdub fully process the file, and save the final .avi file back to the Archos.
Now this is hard work! As an example, after recording "Blade" over the weekend, it took about 2 hours to copy from Tivo to Archos in in real time, and about another 1.5 hours to convert it to the new .avi file.
So, my questions are really:
1) Can anyone think of a better way to do what I am doing?
2) Is the way I am using VirtualDub correct?
3) Am I just being too picky? I am really not a fan of the 'squashy face syndrome'
Any advice gratefully received!
I have Sky Digital and a widescreen TV, so I have set the TV type to widescreen in the Sky Menu. I have set the TV aspect on my Panasonic TV to "4:3". Tivo records the Sky signal quite happily, and when I play the recording back on the TV, if the broadcast was widescreen the TV automatically switches to widescreen mode, and I get the correct picture. If the recording was in 4:3, the TV stays in 4:3 mode, and I get black bars at the side, but the picture looks 'normal'.
So far so good. But I also have a portable Archos player (AV420, great piece of kit, my second favoutite gadget buy after Tivo). And this has a 4:3 screen.
The problem is that when I record from the VCR out socket on Tivo into the Archos, the Archos auto-detects it as a 4:3 picture, and it tries to display the full picture by squashing it all up (i.e. people's faces are really long and thin). If I choose the 16:9 option, it simply tries to crop the top and bottom of the picture, so what I can see is still squashed, and I am missing part of the picture anyway.
Reading round some of the Archos forums people seems to suggest that I should change the Sky box to output letterbox 4:3. Then when it plays back it plays backs as a 4:3 image, and the Archos displays it correctly. But I do not want to do this, as most things I watch on the TV, and I want to keep them on the Tivo in a widescreen format.
The only way I have found round this is as follows:
1) Record the film from Tivo choosing the 4:3 setting on Archos. It saves it as a 512x384 resolution avi file
2) Copy the .avi file from the Archos to my PC
3) Using virtualDub, load the resize filter, and reduce the resolution to 512x288 (this stretches the picture so it is now in a 16:9 format i.e. 1.7777777778 to 1)
4) Still in the resize filter, then choose to create a letterbox image by increasing the image size back to 512x384 (so it adds the black bars at top and bottom)
5) Let virtualdub fully process the file, and save the final .avi file back to the Archos.
Now this is hard work! As an example, after recording "Blade" over the weekend, it took about 2 hours to copy from Tivo to Archos in in real time, and about another 1.5 hours to convert it to the new .avi file.
So, my questions are really:
1) Can anyone think of a better way to do what I am doing?
2) Is the way I am using VirtualDub correct?
3) Am I just being too picky? I am really not a fan of the 'squashy face syndrome'
Any advice gratefully received!