Displaying a good PAL image on TV-out? Possible with an All-In-Wonder?

Hi,
I have a Matrox G400 which had excellent quality TV-out for watching
avi's, etc.
I do occasionally play games and have noticed the G400 struggling on
anything decent.
Thus this prompted me to test a Hercules 9800SE AIW. As this is supposed
to be a multimedia card with both TV in & out via the Rage Theater 200
chip I expected good things. The gaming is exceptionally fast, especially
when softmodded to a 9800 Pro.
However, when viewing an avi the picture looks stretched horizontally.
Using all the adjustments available I can do nothing to correct this
problem to my satisfaction. It seems that adjusting the vertical size of
the picture (which would fix this) does nothing. I can reduce the
horizontal width of the TV picture to correct the aspect ratio, but then I
am left with black gaps on both the left and right of the image.
I used to have a Matrox G400 which had excellent quality TV-out.
However, it had two problems; 1) lost the left and right edges of the
picture 2) very jerky playing NTSC clips. Both of these could be fixed
with the DivXG400 filter (http://www.tac.ee/~prr/videoutils/divxg400.html).
The latter problem requiring manual intervention for each change of format
which was tedious.
The DivXG400 fix above was a Directshow filter which effectively changed
the aspect ratio of the frame. Does any other filter exist which would
allow me to correct the poor frame format this AIW is generating? I've
tried the DivXG400 filter with the AIW, but this does not provide the
vertical frame size alteration that's needed.
Am I missing something here or is it just not possible to get correct
output on a PAL TV? Maybe it's also not possible on NTSC, but I'm assuming
that must be correct or how can they seriously call this a multimedia
card? I'm thinking they mightn't've bothered getting it right on PAL.
Many thanks.

"Gilden Man" wrote in message
k...
Hi,
I have a Matrox G400 which had excellent quality TV-out for watching
avi's, etc.
I do occasionally play games and have noticed the G400 struggling on
anything decent.
Thus this prompted me to test a Hercules 9800SE AIW. As this is supposed
to be a multimedia card with both TV in & out via the Rage Theater 200
chip I expected good things. The gaming is exceptionally fast, especially
when softmodded to a 9800 Pro.
However, when viewing an avi the picture looks stretched horizontally.
Using all the adjustments available I can do nothing to correct this
problem to my satisfaction. It seems that adjusting the vertical size of
the picture (which would fix this) does nothing. I can reduce the
horizontal width of the TV picture to correct the aspect ratio, but then I
am left with black gaps on both the left and right of the image.
I used to have a Matrox G400 which had excellent quality TV-out.
However, it had two problems; 1) lost the left and right edges of the
picture 2) very jerky playing NTSC clips. Both of these could be fixed
with the DivXG400 filter
(http://www.tac.ee/~prr/videoutils/divxg400.html).
The latter problem requiring manual intervention for each change of format
which was tedious.
The DivXG400 fix above was a Directshow filter which effectively changed
the aspect ratio of the frame. Does any other filter exist which would
allow me to correct the poor frame format this AIW is generating? I've
tried the DivXG400 filter with the AIW, but this does not provide the
vertical frame size alteration that's needed.
Am I missing something here or is it just not possible to get correct
output on a PAL TV? Maybe it's also not possible on NTSC, but I'm assuming
that must be correct or how can they seriously call this a multimedia
card? I'm thinking they mightn't've bothered getting it right on PAL.

I've not tried mine yet as it's in an 'entertainment' PC and I've
dumped my TV. However, I'll try it on another TV and let you
know the outcome in a day or two.
One thing occurs to me though - perhaps your TV is incorrectly
auto-switching to another display mode (eg 'widescreen'). If your
set has this capability, it'd be worth manually overriding it and trying
other modes (the TV in my lounge has about 8 different modes.)
HTH
--
Rob

Gilden Man wrote:

Hi,
I have a Matrox G400 which had excellent quality TV-out for watching
avi's, etc.
I do occasionally play games and have noticed the G400 struggling on
anything decent.
Thus this prompted me to test a Hercules 9800SE AIW. As this is
supposed
to be a multimedia card with both TV in & out via the Rage Theater 200
chip I expected good things. The gaming is exceptionally fast,
especially when softmodded to a 9800 Pro.
However, when viewing an avi the picture looks stretched
horizontally.
Using all the adjustments available I can do nothing to correct this
problem to my satisfaction. It seems that adjusting the vertical size
of the picture (which would fix this) does nothing. I can reduce the
horizontal width of the TV picture to correct the aspect ratio, but
then I am left with black gaps on both the left and right of the
image.
I used to have a Matrox G400 which had excellent quality TV-out.
However, it had two problems; 1) lost the left and right edges of the
picture 2) very jerky playing NTSC clips. Both of these could be fixed
with the DivXG400 filter
(http://www.tac.ee/~prr/videoutils/divxg400.html). The latter problem
requiring manual intervention for each change of format which was
tedious.
The DivXG400 fix above was a Directshow filter which effectively
changed
the aspect ratio of the frame. Does any other filter exist which would
allow me to correct the poor frame format this AIW is generating? I've
tried the DivXG400 filter with the AIW, but this does not provide the
vertical frame size alteration that's needed.
Am I missing something here or is it just not possible to get
correct
output on a PAL TV? Maybe it's also not possible on NTSC, but I'm
assuming that must be correct or how can they seriously call this a
multimedia card? I'm thinking they mightn't've bothered getting it
right on PAL.
Many thanks.

FWIW, I've never been happy with the TV-out on either of my ATI cards
(Radeon 8500LE and Rage Fury Pro). I never seem to be able to stretch the
vertical aspect of the picture across the whole of the screen. As soon as
the pic reaches a certain point, it just disappears behind a black
border. I also tend to assume they just never bothered to make them work
properly for PAL displays.


Dave.

I have pretty good PAL tv-out with Theater Mode and overscan enabled.
I'm using Catalyst 3.9. I only use tv-out for watching DivX/XviD movies.
I have noticed that for good PAL tv-out the resolution needs to be
800x600. 640x480 is really bad. Unfortunately, if your avi file has a
lower resolution than 640x480 (which is the case for nearly all DivX
movies) Theater Mode will automatically default to 640x480. That's fine
for NTSC tv-out but not for PAL.

Solution: use ffdshow-alpha to resize the movie on the fly (during
playback) to 800x??? (??? depends on the aspect ratio of the movie).
Then Theater Mode automatically uses 800x600 for PAL tv-out and it looks
fine. With overscan enabled in the tv-out properties I don't get any
black borders on my tv as long as I resize the movie to the full 800x600
resolution. Of course, most movies are widescreen, so I still get black
bars in that case, but this is what I do if I don't want any black bars:

I have a 16:9 tv so I crop the movie left and right (also on the fly
with ffdshow) to a 16:9 aspect ratio. Then I resize it (again with
ffdshow) to 800x600 which makes it anamorphic 16:9 (full screen but
looking squashed on a 4:3 tv). Then I manually select widescreen mode on
my tv and I get a full screen 16:9 picture (no black borders at all and
the correct aspect ratio).

In the Clone Mode Options you can check 'Full screen' and '16:9
(Widescreen)' but I haven't bothered because in my case ffdshow
does that kind of resizing already.

So it's possible to have borderless PAL tv-out with a Radeon card and
Catalyst 3.9 but you have to enable Overscan in the tv-out settings
(TV Properties - Adjustments) and the resolution of your video has
to be 800x600. Well, it works for me anyway. YMMV.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow/
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/f...w-20030523.exe

In article , erratic wrote:
Solution: use ffdshow-alpha to resize the movie on the fly (during
playback) to 800x??? (??? depends on the aspect ratio of the movie).
Then Theater Mode automatically uses 800x600 for PAL tv-out and it looks
fine. With overscan enabled in the tv-out properties I don't get any
black borders on my tv as long as I resize the movie to the full 800x600
resolution. Of course, most movies are widescreen, so I still get black
bars in that case, but this is what I do if I don't want any black bars:

Sir, you're a scholar. I have Catalyst 3.9 and have had Gordian Knot with
it's CodecPack installed for sometime. That includes
ffdshow-alpha-2003-05-23. I didn't know what it could do, until now.
That's exactly the kind of filter I was hinting at in my post. Of course
I didn't realise that the 640x480 would have such faults, where the
800x600 is working as expected. Is the 1024x768 PAL mode going to be any
better? I guess that's a no, or you'd be using it already?
So far that has allowed me to view everything in the correct aspect
ratio. That's even for subtitled movies when DirectVobSub is autoloading
and expanding the image to 4:3 so it can put the subtitles in the black
border below the picture.
Although, I just told ffdshow-alpha to rezise everything to 800x600. You
seem to be suggesting I should alter that for each movie?
The quality even looks good. Seems to be the level of my G400, as I
remember it.

I have a 16:9 tv so I crop the movie left and right (also on the fly
with ffdshow) to a 16:9 aspect ratio. Then I resize it (again with
ffdshow) to 800x600 which makes it anamorphic 16:9 (full screen but
looking squashed on a 4:3 tv). Then I manually select widescreen mode on
my tv and I get a full screen 16:9 picture (no black borders at all and
the correct aspect ratio).

I still have a plain 4:3 TV with no fancy modes It's good to know that
if I do get a 16:9 TV, that this card will display a good widescreen
picture (with the help of ffdshow-alpha .

In the Clone Mode Options you can check 'Full screen' and '16:9
(Widescreen)' but I haven't bothered because in my case ffdshow
does that kind of resizing already.

Does the Catalyst 16:9 button actually do anything? It makes no change to
the picture at all for me. I know I've got a 4:3 TV, but this button on
the G400 drivers used to change the aspect ratio accordingly.

So it's possible to have borderless PAL tv-out with a Radeon card and
Catalyst 3.9 but you have to enable Overscan in the tv-out settings
(TV Properties - Adjustments) and the resolution of your video has
to be 800x600. Well, it works for me anyway. YMMV.

I've tried overscan, but I'm not sure I see the benefit. Ok I can fill the
screen, but I also lose some of the image?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow/
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/f...w-20030523.exe

Now the final part is trying to stop the audible interference this card
creates on my Midiman Audiophile 2496. It's rather annoying wearing
headphones now. Various low level white noise which varies according to
whatever is displayed. Open a white window and hear an increase in noise.
Scroll an Explorer window and hear a short noise reminiscent of a chamois
leather on a window.
Don't suppose you have another bright idea for that one?
Cheers.

In article , Rob Hemmings wrote:
"Gilden Man" wrote in message
One thing occurs to me though - perhaps your TV is incorrectly
auto-switching to another display mode (eg 'widescreen'). If your
set has this capability, it'd be worth manually overriding it and trying
other modes (the TV in my lounge has about 8 different modes.)

The beauty of my TV is it's simplicity. It's an 11 year old 4:3 which
doesn't have all these fancy modes. It has S-video in and just the one
mode, 4:3

On 10 Dec 2003 18:10:06 GMT, Gilden Man wrote:

Although, I just told ffdshow-alpha to rezise everything to 800x600. You
seem to be suggesting I should alter that for each movie?

800x600 is 4:3. If you resize a widescreen movie (640x272 for example)
to 600x800 the aspect ratio will be wrong.

Does the Catalyst 16:9 button actually do anything? It makes no change to
the picture at all for me. I know I've got a 4:3 TV, but this button on
the G400 drivers used to change the aspect ratio accordingly.

The 16:9 button should make your video 'anamorphic' so it will look
correct on a 16:9 tv in widescreen mode, but I've never really used it,
because ffdshow does that for me.

I've tried overscan, but I'm not sure I see the benefit. Ok I can fill the
screen, but I also lose some of the image?

Yes, I prefer to lose a little bit of the image instead of having the
movie surrounded by black bars, but on the TV Properties tab you can use
the Screen Position and Screen Size arrows (instead of Overscan) to get
it exactly right, I suppose.

Does the Catalyst 16:9 button actually do anything? It makes no change to
the picture at all for me. I know I've got a 4:3 TV, but this button on
the G400 drivers used to change the aspect ratio accordingly.

Atleast for me it does absolutely nothing. I'm using R9600 with 28" 16:9 TV
in Theater Mode, and the image on the TV-screen is ALWAYS 4:3 despite the
setting in clone mode options. This is not a big problem since my TV has
"letterbox" zoom wich cuts from top and bottom to get from 4:3 image to
16:9. This way I can indeed get full screen 16:9, but unfortunately lose
vertical resolution (doesn't bother me that much since I cannot see any
difference in image quality). Also the area being cut is always only black
(unless I'm viewing a 4:3 aspect videofile, but then I wouldn't be able to
use full widescreen anyway) so I'm not losing any image information in the
process. Hopefully ATI will someday make drivers that fully support
widescreen TV's.

"erratic" wrote in message
...
On 10 Dec 2003 18:10:06 GMT, Gilden Man wrote:

Although, I just told ffdshow-alpha to rezise everything to 800x600.
You
seem to be suggesting I should alter that for each movie?

800x600 is 4:3. If you resize a widescreen movie (640x272 for example)
to 600x800 the aspect ratio will be wrong.

snip

If you set ffdshow to resize to 800x600 and then select the keep original
aspect ratio in the aspect ratio section it will produce 800x600 output but
will retain the source AR. It adds black bars top and bottom to pad the
height to 600.

In article , erratic wrote:
On 10 Dec 2003 18:10:06 GMT, Gilden Man wrote:

Although, I just told ffdshow-alpha to rezise everything to 800x600. You
seem to be suggesting I should alter that for each movie?

800x600 is 4:3. If you resize a widescreen movie (640x272 for example)
to 600x800 the aspect ratio will be wrong.

As another poster has mentioned, I just let it and the defaults and it
maintained the aspect ratio while making it 800x600. Maybe you old timers
are used to that option not being there, or it not being defaulted for
you. Me, I've come into this software late, so I've not had to deal with
as many foibles as you

Does the Catalyst 16:9 button actually do anything? It makes no change to
the picture at all for me. I know I've got a 4:3 TV, but this button on
the G400 drivers used to change the aspect ratio accordingly.

The 16:9 button should make your video 'anamorphic' so it will look
correct on a 16:9 tv in widescreen mode, but I've never really used it,
because ffdshow does that for me.

You'll probably find it does nothing. The G400 button provided the
appropriate unwatchable distortion on my 4:3 TV, that looked like it'd be
correct on a 16:9 TV. But, the Catalyst button does nothing.

I've tried overscan, but I'm not sure I see the benefit. Ok I can fill the
screen, but I also lose some of the image?

Yes, I prefer to lose a little bit of the image instead of having the
movie surrounded by black bars, but on the TV Properties tab you can use
the Screen Position and Screen Size arrows (instead of Overscan) to get
it exactly right, I suppose.

We like different things then. I'd prefer to see the whole image. A little
black doesn't bother me. Horses for courses, eh?