Question about anime + mpeg4 dvd player

Hi,

Does anyone else have a Phillips DVP642 or another DVD player that can play DivX files? I have a few DVDs with anime burned on them, they are still in the original .avi format. When I play it in my DVD player, everything works fine - except the video is "too big" for the TV screen. The anime is displayed full screen on TV but all the edges are cut off, which makes it irritating because the subtitles are off screen. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem, maybe I'm burning the files the wrong way?

Thanks in advance,

xeabo

yes i bought one very recently and have the same problem... i think its the way you connect it to the TV, you might need to use S-video or even better: component video. Keep in mind that the TV has to be compatible with these and they are usually the newer and more expensive ones... other than that im not sure. The DVP642 reads the file as an mpeg-4 when its an avi... that might have something to do with it, im not completely sure.

There is nothing wrong with the player, the problem is how the videos were encoded. Most of the anime that is encoded for fansubbers are intended for playback on your computer, so they encoded it to dimensions that would be best for your computer screen. However, since your playing the videos on the TV, the video does not adjust to its suited dimensions and thus makes it either too long or wide. That is a light description of what is happening.

There are a few ways of fixing this problem. The easiest way would be to look if there is a zoom function in your DVD player and just zoom out a little so the subtitles are visible. If your player doesn't have that kind of function, then you are going to have to re-encode all your videos to make them a size suitable for your TV.

First, get VirtualDub Mod. After you have unzipped everything, open up the program and choose the video file you want to encode by going to "File" "Open Video File." Then go "Video" and "Filters" (under Video, make sure Full Processing mode is selected). Go to "Add" and from the list, choose "Resize" and press "OK." Make the "new width" 680 and the "new height" 440 and then press "OK" (you can leave everything else the same). Then press "OK" again to confirm the change which will then bring you back to the main menu. Then go to "File" "Save As." Put the file name you want and make sure you save it as a ".avi" Under "Video" on the bottom, make sure it's on Full Processing Mode. Unfortunatly, you are going to have to compress it again since leaving it as uncompressed will make it a huge file, which I doubt you want. Press "Change" and choose either the Divx or Xvid codec (I believe your player can play both). For this, I'll use Xvid (but I believe Divx has the same options). Choose Xvid and then press "Configure." Change the encoding type to "Two Pass - 2nd pass" (this will keep the file smaller but with the same amount of quality) and make the quality (using the bar) a little less then maximum quality (you may have to change this depending on how big you want the file). Then press "OK" and "OK" again. Choose "Save" and it will start encoding the video. After it finishes, you should have a TV-ready file. You might have to change the dimensions depending on the TV, but I've used those dimensions before and they have worked fine.

That is pretty much it. Hope I could help.

P.S: This guy explains a little more into what the problem was.

yes it seems to work, but when you resize it, a 175 Mb file becomes 30 GIGS! I dont have that much room on my computer; I would have to delete a lot and i don't want to do that. I suppose there isnt another way. When you re-encode it with xdiv or divx how big is the file? Because I want to keep it relatively the same size if I have to do it.

Yeah, that's why I said you have to recompress it with either Divx or Xvid, because the file gets huge. When you recompress it, the size of the file depends on what quality level you put. If you put it at maxium quality, you are going to get a file that is about 400 MB. That is why I said to put it a little less then full, so you can keep it around 200 MB (which is where most of the anime out there is around). Hope I could help.

so it has to get near to 30 gigs? damn, i need a new computer

Nothing has to get near 30 gigs, I don't see what you are missing from what I am saying. When you put the resize filter, make sure you put compression also, or else it will get to 30 gigs like you said. I think what you are doing is trying to resize it first, and then wanting to compress it. You can do both at the same time, just read the instructions I typed in my first post.

oh... haha... sorry, i misunderstood stos... i thought i had to resize then re-encode.

one more question, when i choose compression type, i dont have xvid. Do I need to download a seperate codec for that or would DivX just have it?

Xvid is a seperate and different codec than Divx. However, you don't need to get Xvid for what you are doing, Divx will work fine. The only reason I used Xvid is that that is the codec I have (I don't have Divx) and I believe it is compatable with your DVD player along with Divx. The Divx codec should have similar settings as the Xvid codec. Hope I could help.

where would I get Xvid, i want to experiment around for the best setting.

You can get the Xvid codec from here. Get the first one that says "Koepi's Binary." Hope I could help.

Acutally, this specific problem wont be fixed by this method. Although you can resize your episode, the TV will still take away part of border because of overscan. One must add black borders around the frames to compensate for the overscan. Every TV has a different amount of overscan, usually between 5-10% of the size of the video. To add black bars read this. It is still very diffcult to get the same quality while editing video. I decided that since my episodes are at least understandable, I wont change them because of the loss of quality of the video. Another option is to buy another TV with a small amount of overscan. I'm sure you can find statistics about different TV's on the internet. Also I think that widescreen HDTVs have almost no overscan at all. If youre willing to invest, I suggest to purchase one of those. Also, buy component cables which will make the picture quality even better. Again, this is all my opinion, and I have not experimented much.

Huh, I thought resizing it would fix the overscan problem. There is a "Fill" filter in Virtual Dub that will allow you to add borders on each side, but I guess you don't want to do that since you lose quality. I think the best (and cheapest) idea to watch your anime from your computer on your TV would to invest in some S-Video cables. I'm guessing that you have a somewhat decent computer, so check the back of it and see if there is an S-Video Output. If there is, all you need to do is get an S-Video cable (you might need to invest in a coupler depending on the distance between your computer and TV) and just connect it from your computer to your TV (if you don't, the video cards are relatively cheap). Then just get a headphone extension cord if your video card does not have Audio-Out, and connect it to speakers or use headphones for the audio. The total cost (assuming you have the video card already) is only going to be around $20. The products I showed you is the cheaper stuff (and there is probably even cheaper out there), so you could spend I little more on the "high-end" products if you would like, even though it doesn't really matter that much.

Anyway, that is how I watch my anime and I have to say it is was a really easy and cheap thing to set up. Hope I could help.

Best hardware player ever made:

modded xbox + xbmc.

Screw all that crap with tv-out and mpeg4 dvd players and overscan issues. The modded xbox is the BEST option, if you want to watch downloaded shows on a TV instead of on the monitor.

These days, you don't even need to do much to mod an xbox, between softmods and solderless chips.