Force Sage window size / aspect?

[TBacker]

I have an HD200 running in my living room using a custom SageMC 16x9 theme.

I also have a PC client in my office, but it's running on a 4x3 monitor.

I use my PC client to work on my theme, so I run the client windowed and manually sized in a roughly 16x9 aspect. I have set the property "ui/forced_pixel_aspect_ratio=0.99947375" which "un-squishes" the graphics.

My question is, is there a way to force the Sage window itself to open / default to a 16x9 aspect? Right now, I have to open the client, run 16x9 video, and manually size the window to fit the video, but this is rather arbitrary when you're talking pixel sized moves when laying out images on the GUI.

Right clicking on the window title bar gives me a choice of 4x3 aspects. It would be nice if I could "fake Sage out" so it will do 16x9.

Anyone know how to do this?

[stanger89]

I thought you could define window size prests in the properties file that you could select from the title bar, but I can't seem to find the info right now...

[razrsharpe]

i believe stanger is referring to this property item:

quick_menu_sizes=640x480,320x240

the HD200 uses a ui resolution of 960x540 (or at least thats what mine is (half 1920x1080) and i havent found a way to change it... i really really WISH there was a way to make it the native resolution of the tv... anyway i digress....

my property looks like this (you set this on the client):

quick_menu_sizes=1280x720,960x540,640x480,320x240

right click the title bar of the ui and you get a drop down dialog box. I do all of my studio coding with the ui set to 960x540.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by TBacker

I have set the property "ui/forced_pixel_aspect_ratio=0.99947375" which "un-squishes" the graphics.

Just curious why you would want this set to a number so close to but not exactly equal to 1.0.

My guess is that you could probably delete this property and let it default to zero once you get the window sized correctly.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

i believe stanger is referring to this property item:

quick_menu_sizes=640x480,320x240

That's exactly the property I was thinking of, I so rarely use Client in a window (frankly I us it pretty little at all anymore) I'd forgotten what it was...

[TBacker]

Thanks to all - that property is the ticket!

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Just curious why you would want this set to a number so close to but not exactly equal to 1.0.

When running a 16x9 theme on a 4x3 monitor, the images and icons do not display properly - the aspect is off so they look narrow. The pixel property corrects this issue. The window size has no effect on the graphics scaling, just the monitor aspect ratio.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by TBacker

When running a 16x9 theme on a 4x3 monitor, the images and icons do not display properly - the aspect is off so they look narrow. The pixel property corrects this issue. The window size has no effect on the graphics scaling, just the monitor aspect ratio.

I don't have that problem... I just made sure the aspect ratio was set correctly in setup (4x3, 5x4, 16x10, 16x9) for my desktop setup... and its just as expected.... just a side note a desktop resolution of 1280x1024 is 5x4 not 4x3... so that might be your issue (obviously i have no idea what your monitor resolution is but im just throwing it out there.)

[TBacker]

The whole point to my post is making Sage run in 16x9 mode on my non-16x9 desktop. I use it to more quickly design and test my 16x9 theme that I use on the extender in my living room that is connected to a 16x9 monitor.

[GKusnick]

Disclaimer: I don't use SageMC amd have never made a theme for it, so maybe there's some subtlety I'm not grasping.

However I've done extensive STV and STVI development on monitors of various aspect ratios (4x3, 5x4, 16x10) and the rule of thumb has always been to set the display aspect ratio on your dev machine correctly for that machine's monitor, not for the monitor of your target machine on which the UI will ultimately run. You can resize the SageTV window to any aspect ratio you choose in order to test menu layouts, but the D.A.R. should always be correct for the attached monitor's actual ratio. This is what enabled Sage to calculate the correct pixel aspect ratio so you don't have to override it with an explicit property setting.

[razrsharpe]

What Greg said... Thats the point i was trying to make earlier... Thanks for explaining it much better then i could have

I use SageMC almost exclusively and have never had to explicitly set the D.A.R. on my dev machine and the text/graphics look just like they should.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Disclaimer: I don't use SageMC amd have never made a theme for it, so maybe there's some subtlety I'm not grasping.

However I've done extensive STV and STVI development on monitors of various aspect ratios (4x3, 5x4, 16x10) and the rule of thumb has always been to set the display aspect ratio on your dev machine correctly for that machine's monitor, not for the monitor of your target machine on which the UI will ultimately run. You can resize the SageTV window to any aspect ratio you choose in order to test menu layouts, but the D.A.R. should always be correct for the attached monitor's actual ratio. This is what enabled Sage to calculate the correct pixel aspect ratio so you don't have to override it with an explicit property setting.

[TBacker]

Well, you are all correct, and I was wrong.

I was getting ready to do screen caps to show why I did what I did, and when I reset the pixel aspect to 1.0, everything was still fine.

I will admit, I was trying A LOT of different setting combinations to get the SageMC theme to display right. I guess I ended up chasing my tail a bit.

In my defense, the aspect was truly fubar in the beginning. The text and video rendered properly, but the image based stuff was all squeezed, even with the aspect setting set to 16x9 and the window manually dragged to the approximate 16x9 size. I'm not sure why or what has really changed now except for the window size settings above.

I hate when things seem to fix themselves - that usually means it may break itself again later!

Thanks for all of the input and the debate!

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by TBacker

In my defense, the aspect was truly fubar in the beginning. The text and video rendered properly, but the image based stuff was all squeezed, even with the aspect setting set to 16x9 and the window manually dragged to the approximate 16x9 size. I'm not sure why or what has really changed now except for the window size settings above.

I hate when things seem to fix themselves - that usually means it may break itself again later!

Glad you figured it out ... i dont think things fixed themselves though. Setting the aspect ratio setting to 16x9 on a 4x3 monitor would squish/distort the text/images. The display aspect ratio (DAR) and the Sage Display aspect ratio are two completely separate, independent things. The DAR should be set (and then left alone) to match the target display regardless of what the sage UI aspect ratio that you want. The DAR allows sage to properly size images/text so that they do not appear distorted across different types (size, AR, pixel dimensions) of monitors.

And debates are always fun and usually enlightening just glad we were able to figure it out

[TBacker]

Okay, to be clear, right now:

• Sage is running non-maximized, in a 1280x720 window, on my 5x4 aspect monitor.
• Sage is set for 16x9 aspect in the "Display Aspect Radio" config screen. The test pattern is severely out of square / round.
• Markers meet the corners in "overscan settings".
• "Source Aspect Ratio" settings are 100%, 100%, 0, 0
• ui/forced_pixel_aspect_ratio=1.0

And the 16x9 theme (graphics and text) is displaying correctly.

I attached my properties file for the curious among you.

Not sure if this backs up your experiences or not, but that's how it's working for me right now.

[GKusnick]

Well, the difference between 0.99947375 and 1.0 is roughly one part in 2000, so I wouldn't expect to see any visible difference from that change. I was just curious how you arrived at that precise figure when it's visually indistinguishable from 1.0.

That said, I'd still suggest that you revert that property to its default setting of zero (or just delete it and let Sage restore the default), and set the DAR to 5x4 so that the circle graphic on the DAR screen appears round. My experience is that your UI graphics should then display correctly even in a 16x9 window.

(And as razrsharpe indicated, the playback Aspect Ratio Mode and Aspect Ratio Settings affect only video playback, not UI graphics, and are therefore not really relevant to this discussion.)

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Set the DAR to 5x4 so that the circle graphic on the DAR screen appears round. My experience is that your UI graphics should then display correctly even in a 16x9 window.

that is my experience as well and exactly how i run my dev machine, except i run in a nonmaximized 960x540 window because thats what sage is reporting the UI dimensions are of the HD200

[TBacker]

Well, I changed the DAR to 5x4, and didn't change anything else, and nothing changed display-wise, so I guess that works.

I must have got a bad batch of crack

Now back to my regularly scheduled program...