Stretching 4:3 material to 16:9

[ftlee]

I am currently evaluating SageTV. I was told that SageTV has aspect ratio control but, when I use a third party encoder (Sonic or Elecard) it ignores my aspect ratio setting and displays a 4:3 image as 4:3 with black bars. The software does not do this with the default settings. Please tell me there is a fix...

thanks,

Frank T. Lee

[ftlee]

I was able to figure this one out. If you use the VMR option in your software with a third-party encoder, SageTV ignores the aspect ration settings. It works fine in Overlay mode. Is this the way it is supposed to work?

Thanks,

Frank T. Lee

[Narflex]

I'll get back to you on this, I'll have to look at the code.

[ftlee]

Narflex,

Did you get a chance to look into this yet?

Thanks,

Frank T. Lee

[Narflex]

Yeah, I just did. There's apparently a bug where the VMR is ignoring the aspect ratio settings that are being specified. As you noticed, it does work for the Overlay Mixer just fine. The VMR support will be fixed in the future.

Thanks.

[ftlee]

fixed in the future

Narflex,

Thanks for the reply. What does fixed in the future mean? What is the difference between VMR and Overlay? Does one look better than the other?

Thanks,

Frank T. Lee

[Mark Lamutt]

Frank, the way I understand it is overlay is the old way of displaying video. VMR is only available with XP (I believe). I don't really notice any video quality difference between the 2.

This is really odd, because I would swear that I was using VMR and the AR controls when we were testing this feature out, but I may not have been.

Jeff is amazing at getting new things in and fixing items very quickly. While I wouldn't presume to say exactly what "fixed in the future" means, my experience has been he is very fast with this stuff. I'd hazard a guess that if it can be fixed in something that he has control over, it will be done sooner rather than later.

[ftlee]

Any updates to when this might be fixed?

Thanks,

Frank T. Lee

[Narflex]

Not yet. Is it causing you any problems by it not being fixed?

[ftlee]

Narflex,

No, no problem. I am using the Overlay mode until you get it fixed. I was just wondering because I thought VMR might offer some PQ improvements.

Thanks,

Frank T. Lee

[ftlee]

Is there a reason that this problem is not being fixed in version 1.2?

Thanks,

Frank T. Lee

[dkardatzke]

Frank,

It's not a trivial fix so I can't say when we'll get to it. It is on our list for the future though.

Dan