aspect ratio

[gilded07]

I've been meaning to ask about this for awhile now...

For my analog live tv and tv recordings, the picture is stretched wide to fit the 16:9 of my Samsung 52" LCD. And of course, I have the black bars above and below the analog picture. This isn't a problem with my HD locals via the HDHR.

Is there a way I can get SageTV not to stretch the analog picture so wide? Instead it would be narrower with the black bars on the left and right of the picture I suppose, which may not be any better but I'd like to try it and see.

When i press the aspect ratio button on my hd300 remote, it will change the AR but none of the options shows the more narrower view - they're all variations of zoom or fill (I usually watch on the default setting of source which stretches the picture wide).

[pjwerdna]

I had this issue myself a while ago.

There's no way to make the picture smaller using the AR Mode settings on SageTV. Last time I asked they were only considering implmenting it.

If the picture is marked as 16:9, but is actually 4:3, then the only way to display it correctly is to either change the aspect on the TV or change the source file/recording to be 4:3 using some video editor.

[tmiranda]

Try the Active Aspect Ratios plugin. It allows you to map one of Sage's AR modes to the aspect ratio of the show. (comskip generates the AR info for the actual show.)

If there is no AR built into Sage you can define your own to get the effect you want.

I use the plugin primarily to display pillarboxed shows on my 16x9 TV.

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Try the Active Aspect Ratios plugin. It allows you to map one of Sage's AR modes to the aspect ratio of the show. (comskip generates the AR info for the actual show.)

If there is no AR built into Sage you can define your own to get the effect you want.

I use the plugin primarily to display pillarboxed shows on my 16x9 TV.

How do I know if there are AR built into Sage?

[tmiranda]

On the extender remote press "Aspect", doing so will cycle through the AR options. On a Client press Options while a video is playing and look for "Aspect Ratio Mode".

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Try the Active Aspect Ratios plugin. It allows you to map one of Sage's AR modes to the aspect ratio of the show. (comskip generates the AR info for the actual show.)

If there is no AR built into Sage you can define your own to get the effect you want.

I use the plugin primarily to display pillarboxed shows on my 16x9 TV.

I installed the active aspect ratios plugin. I pulled up a history channel show (American Restoration) that I recorded several months ago. History Channel shows are recorded on either my PVR150 or PVR500, both SD analog, of course.

When I played the show it still looks stretched with the bars above and below the screen. When I press the ASPECT button on my hd300 remote, I get the detailed plug in menu and everything looks enabled. But still not the left and right letter box I was expecting.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

[gilded07]

Continuation...

And please redirect me to the correct forum / thread if necessary...

but each time I've installed a UI plug in recently, I've had to go into detailed set up and reload the commercial detector STVi.

I installed the captions plug in and the aspect ratio plug within the last day or so and each time com skip playback didn't skip the marked commercials...until I went in and reloaded the comskip playback STVi.

Should this be happening? and when I reload the comskip playback STVi am I losing the captions and aspect ratio STVi's?

You'd think I know this stuff better after 5 years now but I run pretty basic in my UI. I have only a handful of plug ins so the whole STVi thing is still a little foreign to me.

[tmiranda]

I'm not sure why you need to reload STVi's. Let's put that aside for now.

In order for the AAR plugin to work you must edit the comskip.ini file you are using and add (or change) the lines "output_aspect=1" and "verbose=10". This will force comskip to create the aspect ratio info needed for the plugin to work.

comskip must then be run on the video for the plugin to work. If an .edl file already exists you must delete it and re-run comskip. You will know it's working correctly if you see an .aspects file for each video. The AAR plugin reads this file to determine where the aspect ratios change in the video.

After you have a video with an .aspects file you need to map the various aspect ratios found in the video to AR modes available in Sage. The wiki has more detailed instructions: http://code.google.com/p/tmiranda/wi...veAspectRatios

If you are using CommercialDetector you should also add ".aspects" to the list of files to cleanup when you delete a video. If you do not you'll end up with many orphaned .aspect files

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by gilded07

but each time I've installed a UI plug in recently, I've had to go into detailed set up and reload the commercial detector STVi.

I installed the captions plug in and the aspect ratio plug within the last day or so and each time com skip playback didn't skip the marked commercials...until I went in and reloaded the comskip playback STVi.

Should this be happening? and when I reload the comskip playback STVi am I losing the captions and aspect ratio STVi's?

Sounds like you are importing the STVi's rather than using the Plgin Manager (Setup/SageTV Plugins/Installed Plugins) to enable the plugins.

Make sure you are using SageTV7.xml as the Full UI Package under Setup/Detailed Setup/Advanced and use the plugin manager to mange your plugins.

John