Aspect Ratio "Source" Doesn't work

[Air]

I have a 17" WSXGA+ notebook screen.

When using NVDVD 2.55 or intervideo non css, the "source" option doesn't work correctly.

When watching a DVD in NVDVD, it correctly displays the letterbox format, stretching across the entire screen. When I watch the same DVD in SageTV, it has black bars on the side. When I select "Fill" it stretches it horizontally to the sides to fill the screen too much vertically. 16x9 looks correct, however.

Also, I have to use 4x3 for TV viewing or it looks awful. Using source stretches it to some perverted widescreen format.

What is happening? I know it isn't the decoder since it happens with two different ones. Also, dvd's display fine under NVDVD's program (and I have it set to source under NDVD).

Is there a known solution to this or do I just constantly have to select aspect ratios? It's also annoying because not all widescreen movies are 16x9 so I can't really get it to look right.

I also changed the stretch from 105% horizontal&vertical to 100% hoping that would help but it didn't change anything.

Thank you for your help! Almost have it perfect!

[stanger89]

What resolution are you running and what is the physical aspect ratio of the screen? Also what renderer are you using?

[Air]

Resolution is 1680x1050, a 17" widescreen notebook monitor (not sure of the aspect ratio). It's a sager 4750 (www.sagernotebook.com).
It happens on both overlay and dx9 (in sagetv). It happens when "enhanced nview support" is set to default or vmr7 in nvdvd properties. However, if I set it to VMR9 in both nvdvd and in sagetv source works with tv (doesn't stretch and smush it into widescreen). It doesn't do dvd's correctly though, it smushes them in and stretches them up.

Is there any way to get it to work with overlay for both dvd and tv sources? I like the image better than vmr9 plus it uses less CPU. If I can get it to work with both tv and dvd sources with vmr9 I'd be happy too

Thanks for helping once again stanger89 !

[stanger89]

Well first off, assuming square pixels, your display isn't 16:9 (1.78:1) it's 1.6:1 or 16x10. So even 16x9 video will have bars, just be aware of that.

From what you describe, it sounds like something I've seen, and I think it's a bug in ATI's drivers (damn ATI ). All I can suggest is to make sure your drivers are up to date, that helped mine, but for some reason some titles are still detected wrong.

Oh, and one other thing, DVDs have their own decoder/renderer settings, so to use VMR9 for both TV and DVD, you have to enable it both places.

[Air]

I'm using Omega 2.5.44 drivers based on the Cat 4.55's.

This is because, as OmegaDrivers states "Mobility users beware, these drivers don't support overlay video acceleration on
some chipsets, specially 9600 and 9700 Mobility cards. Other cards may be affected,
but I haven't confirmed the bug on them. The last driver set that doesn't have
this problem are my 2.5.44 drivers. Sorry for any inconveniences, I'm working
on a fix for this matter."

I guess it might not matter if I was using VMR9 but why chance it, I can wait a bit .

Where did you hear of this? I'm curious what drivers the other party with the same issue had. Thanks again for the help stanger89!

[stanger89]

That was me, way back (cat 3.4 or maybe earlier) I was having AR trouble, upgraded and it was fixed. Of course I think I used 3.4 at some point after that and it still worked.

The latest in the saga is that nVDVD 4 and cat 4.9 AR doesn't work at all, it just changes the size of the picture, not the AR.