Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-12 Thread Darren Salt
I demand that Ian Bates may or may not have written...

[snip]
 In the mean time I am looking at the patch Darren Salt brought to my
 attention for xine-lib, and the xine post plugin 'expand' (with special
 attention to Reinhard Nissl's center_cut/crop_out mode') to see if I can
 hack something for xineliboutput, re cropping 16:9 to 4:3.  Noone hold
 their breath though.

I'm particularly interested in that patch getting some testing and fixing; in
particular, I've seen problems with AFD value changes. Once it's working
properly, it can go into xine-lib-1.2.

BTW, about your ISP: http://www.badphorm.co.uk/

[snip]
-- 
| Darren Salt| linux or ds at  | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| + Interception of this message for advertising purposes is not permitted.

There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.

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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-11 Thread Ian Bates
Torgeir Veimo wrote:

 So (finally) a direct question: how do people with 4:3 output devices
 and vdr with xineliboutput configure their boxes?
 
 (shameless plug) Did you actually try softdevice?

Dear Torgeir,

Nothing shameless about the plug!  Yes, I have tried softdevice (recent 
CVS and recent SVN of ffmpeg).  It is actually what I use for viewing 
streamed TV (from my main VDR) on my not-so-perfect laptop LCD.  The 
crop to 4:3 feature works in the way I hoped (4:3 shown as is, 16:9 
cropped to show central 4:3 portion).

However, as most things in life, there are some things that do not work 
as I would like for main TV viewing:

1.  The default deinterlace options, IMHO, do not compare to the tvtime 
plugin available using  xineliboutput (compare fast-action streams such 
as tennis, snooker and football)

2.  I cannot watch HDTV content, which I am able to do with the 
xineliboutput plugin.

For sure the deinterlace is of more importance than viewing HDTV (why 
would I want to do that on a standard CRT in any case?  Proof of concept 
and anticipation of a future TV upgrade is the answer).

Both xineliboutput and softdevice, as many users I am sure will testify, 
  are good pieces of software.  However, for my use, both have their 
pros and cons.

I usually explore as many configuration options as I can, but please if 
there is something I have missed that will allow me to have,

1.  Excellent deinterlacing
2.  Watchable HDTV/H264
3.  16:9 cropped to 4:3

then please let me know!


In the mean time I am looking at the patch Darren Salt brought to my 
attention for xine-lib, and the xine post plugin 'expand' (with special 
attention to Reinhard Nissl's center_cut/crop_out mode') to see if I can 
hack something for xineliboutput, re cropping 16:9 to 4:3.  Noone hold 
their breath though.

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions.  More welcome too.


Kind Regards,


Ian.

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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-11 Thread Reinhard Nissl
Hi,

Ian Bates schrieb:

 Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions.  More welcome too.

In vdr-xine's setup menu, you can specify scaling factors for 
16:9 and 4:3 images. Scaling 16:9 images by 133 % will fit it 
into a 4:3 window (e. g. full screen), dropping information on 
the left and on the right side.

Bye.
-- 
Dipl.-Inform. (FH) Reinhard Nissl
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-09 Thread Jouni Karvo
Ian Bates wrote:
 One more remark, if as I believe from the comments in the code above, 
 that the '16:9 crop to 4:3' behaviour is not implemented in 
 xineliboutput, am I the only one suffering from the lack of this 
 feature?  Am I the only one still using a 4:3 TV?  I don't think so, 
 what do other people do when viewing 16:9 material on a 4:3 device, 
 other than put up with the black bars?
   
I also use a 21 4:3 old CRT TV for all DVD and TV.  And I want to see 
the whole picture, as the others who have responded.

There is another reason, in addition to the real estate reason of 
throwing away a lot of paid content (how wasteful!).  Namely, the 
composition of the images is designed for the format they are shown in, 
at least in quality material.  So, filling the whole screen means you do 
not see the material's photographic value.

I hope some day I'm able to bite the bullet and move to the Full HD 
panel TV world, but so far the old faithful has served well.

Nevertheless, although probably most techies feel the crop mode is not 
interesting, perhaps you'll be able to find one that is willing to 
implement it - or perhaps you can DIY and share the code.

Good luck.

yours,
   Jouni


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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-09 Thread Petri Helin
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Jouni Karvo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  Nevertheless, although probably most techies feel the crop mode is not
  interesting, perhaps you'll be able to find one that is willing to
  implement it - or perhaps you can DIY and share the code.


I think the idea of cropping material from aspect ratios 16:9 or
2.39:1 to 4:3 is not worth putting attention, because it will often
result in quite awkward image. When done properly with technique
called panscan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan) where the
cropped selection can reside at any part of the original image, the
result is bearable. But think about a movie shot and broadcasted in
2.39 and crudely cropped so that the 4:3 part in the middle is
shown... You will see half heads, people talking to people not
included in the picture and so on. Or think about a football match in
16:9 cropped to 4:3... with the ball in the portion left out.

-Petri

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[vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-09 Thread Torgeir Veimo
 So (finally) a direct question: how do people with 4:3 output devices
 and vdr with xineliboutput configure their boxes?

(shameless plug) Did you actually try softdevice?

-- 
Torgeir Veimo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-09 Thread Malcolm Caldwell
On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 13:43 +0300, Petri Helin wrote:
 On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Jouni Karvo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
   Nevertheless, although probably most techies feel the crop mode is not
   interesting, perhaps you'll be able to find one that is willing to
   implement it - or perhaps you can DIY and share the code.
 
 
 I think the idea of cropping material from aspect ratios 16:9 or
 2.39:1 to 4:3 is not worth putting attention, because it will often
 result in quite awkward image. When done properly with technique
 called panscan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan) where the
 cropped selection can reside at any part of the original image, the
 result is bearable. But think about a movie shot and broadcasted in
 2.39 and crudely cropped so that the 4:3 part in the middle is
 shown... You will see half heads, people talking to people not
 included in the picture and so on. Or think about a football match in
 16:9 cropped to 4:3... with the ball in the portion left out.

However, often things just work out: the camera operators are sometimes
directed to shoot the full 16:9 frame but keep the action in a 4:3
frame.  This does happen, and IMHO makes for shots that seem too wide on
a 16:9 screen.  Production companies do this to maximise the market
potential for their material.  To use the football case: the
international feeds still need to deliver 4:3 images.  So the host
broadcaster who wants both a 16:9 version and a 4:3 version can either
employ twice as many camera operators and have twice as many cameras etc
etc OR shoot 16:9 but keep the action in the 4:3 frame.



Then there is 14:9 material.  This is shown on a 4:3 image with smaller
black bars, or cropped less (than 16:9) and shown full screen on a 4:3.

(I myself prefer the black bars on top and on bottom and view all 16:9
programmes that way on my 4:3 set)

(For movies the transfer to video can take more time: there panscan is
used, but so are other techniques including letterbox, image distortion
etc.  It is particularly noticeable at the end of a movie with credits
that use the whole 16:9 width)


 
 -Petri
 
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[vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-08 Thread Ian Bates
Dear all,

I have lurked a while on this list but until now have not had reason to 
post.

I am unable to configure xineliboutput to my liking.  I don't imagine I 
am the only one with this issue, but I have not been able to find a 
solution, either by trial and error or by googling.  I would appreciate 
to hear how other people configure their vdr boxes.


My output device is a 4:3 analog TV.  Watching a 4:3 stream is fine in 
the sense that the full real estate of the TV is used.  Watching a 16:9 
stream results in (depending on various settings I have tried) either 
the stream 'compressed' vertically to maintain the 16:9 ratio (with 
black bars top and bottom), or a vertically 'stretched' image that loses 
the 16:9 ratio but fills the entire TV screen.

What I would like is to maintain the stream 16:9 ratio but by by 
cropping the left and right sections of the stream that fall 'outside' 
the TV, so the full real estate of the TV is used, at the expense of 
losing some stream information.


I have played with various xineliboutput settings, all through the OSD
plugin setup menu.  My current settings are roughly:

LOCAL FRONTEND: Using Xv and set to fullscreen and stretched-to-window 
video.  Aspect ratio set to 4:3 (although PanScan and CenterCutOut 
looked promising but don't do what I thought they might).

VIDEO: aspect ratio set to automatic.  Anything else seems to force the 
aspect ratio to that value.  Software scaling does not seem to be the 
route to follow either.  Autocrop 4:3 letterbox to 16:9 is disabled, but 
also looked promising, but I could not obtain the bahaviour I desire.


So (finally) a direct question: how do people with 4:3 output devices 
and vdr with xineliboutput configure their boxes?


Some brief details of my system:

I am using vdr 1.6.0, a recent-ish (last few days) xineliboutput CVS 
version running under X (i.e. vdr-sxfe) on a NVIDIA 6150 device with the 
binary NVIDIA module (TV-out at 720x576) watching DVB-S streams (thanks 
to a NOVA-S-Plus and a HVR4000 with multiproto, for what that is worth), 
all connected to a 4:3 aspect ratio TV.



I thought this would be a quick question but I have managed to write an 
epic!  Sorry about that.

Best wishes,

Ian.

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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-08 Thread Torgeir Veimo
On 8 Apr 2008, at 16:43, Ian Bates wrote:

 What I would like is to maintain the stream 16:9 ratio but by by
 cropping the left and right sections of the stream that fall 'outside'
 the TV, so the full real estate of the TV is used, at the expense of
 losing some stream information.

This setting is most often called crop mode. The specific setting  
you're after is often called pan-and-scan.

I can't say how to achieve the desired output with xineliboutput  
though, since I use softdevice.

-- 
Torgeir Veimo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-08 Thread Patrick Boettcher
Hi,

On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Ian Bates wrote:
 One more remark, if as I believe from the comments in the code above,
 that the '16:9 crop to 4:3' behaviour is not implemented in
 xineliboutput, am I the only one suffering from the lack of this
 feature?  Am I the only one still using a 4:3 TV?  I don't think so,
 what do other people do when viewing 16:9 material on a 4:3 device,
 other than put up with the black bars?

This is exactly what I'm doing - I'm accepting the black bars at the 
bottom and the top, dreaming about the screen I'm going to buy at some 
point in the future, along with being happy for other xineliboutput-users 
having already a 16:9 screen.

Patrick.


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Re: [vdr] xineliboutput: viewing 16:9 content on 4:3 output device

2008-04-08 Thread Petri Helin
Patrick Boettcher wrote:
 Hi,
 
 On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Ian Bates wrote:
 One more remark, if as I believe from the comments in the code above,
 that the '16:9 crop to 4:3' behaviour is not implemented in
 xineliboutput, am I the only one suffering from the lack of this
 feature?  Am I the only one still using a 4:3 TV?  I don't think so,
 what do other people do when viewing 16:9 material on a 4:3 device,
 other than put up with the black bars?
 
 This is exactly what I'm doing - I'm accepting the black bars at the 
 bottom and the top, dreaming about the screen I'm going to buy at some 
 point in the future, along with being happy for other xineliboutput-users 
 having already a 16:9 screen.
 

I would say the correct term is not accepting but acknowledging... Makes
no sense to me why someone would like to cut 25% from the picture. And 
what about programmes in 2.39:1 aspect ratio? Should those be cut too so 
that they fit to 4:3 ratio and lose 44% of the image in the process?

Anyway, mplayer can do that, try something like mplayer -vf 
crop=507:544,scale=720:544 http://your_server:37890. Although that 
will cut also programmes sent in 4:3 aspect ratio.

-Petri



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