SageTV + PureVideo decoders + FFDShow = black bars on sides and top & bottom of DVDs

[mattress]

I have SageTV setup to play DVD Movies. I use the nVidia PureVideo decoders to decode the dvd video. SageTV is setup to fullscreen exclusive.

I use FFDShow to upscale the dvd movie.

When I watch widescreen movies, I get black bars on the sides of the movie, and on the top and bottom of the screen.
It also looks like the black bars on the top and bottom are part of the movie, they are a slightly different color than the black bars on the sides...


I have a widescreen TV.. Panasonic 34" HD Tube.


Can someone help me track down the setting to stretch out the movie to fit the entire screen? It's like watching a movie on a 27" screen lol..

Thanks for the help!

[mattress]

well, so far I've learned that the different aspect ratio modes have different selectable zoom modes...

so I set 16x9 to 120% stretch for horizontal and vertical under SageTV detailed settings..

this way I can switch to "fill" to watch normal recorded shows, and switch to 16x9 while watching dvds.

[Rogue9]

What resolution are you running at?

And what resolution is FFDShow outputting at? Are you "resizing" the dvd video?

You shouldn't have to switch to 16X9 for DVD's. They should be set as "Source" Aspect Ratio. That way, they will play at their native 720X480, or whatever resolution you have specified in FFDShow.

It sounds like your FFDShow output settings don't match your desktop resolution, and thats why the picture is "smaller." Check your settings in FFDShow, under Resize, and see what it says.

[corykim]

I think you have to force the size, to say 1920x1080, then disable aspect correction.

[corykim]

When I use ffdshow, my DVD menus stop working. Has anyone seen that? BTW, I was able to confirm that I can reproduce the black bar problem at will be enabling/disabling aspect ratio correction in ffdshow.

[mattress]

Originally Posted by corykim

I was able to confirm that I can reproduce the black bar problem at will by enabling/disabling aspect ratio correction in ffdshow.

that did the trick, thanks a lot!!

[ikarus79m]

Stupid question:

Why are you guys using ffdshow to play DVD's? I just set my encoder to NVIDIA and when I insert a DVD it is automatically playing full screen on my HDTV via component out. Is there a reason to use ffdshow? Is the quality better?

What excactly is ffdshow anyways?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

[stanger89]

ffdshow is a post processor (it's also capable of decoding many formats). It allows one to apply many filters, like denoise, sharpen, etc.

One of the more popular uses is to apply resize in ffdshow, in order to use a "superior" algorithm to that used by the video card.

However, in my experience ffdshow basically hoses all aspect ratio control, and doesn not work for everything, or at least one ffdshow configuration is unable to handle everything.

I've found that "PureVideo" handles everything well, very well in fact. So much so that the small improvement ffdshow can give for certain media, is far offset by the trouble it causes for the rest, and I gave up on it.