Hello, I've been searching the forums for anyone with this same question but I'm shocked that I couldn't. Maybe I'm more of a newbie than I thought! I have two DIVX players, one a Phillips DVP-642 (cheapy secondary) and a Phillips DVDR3455H (primary). I have tested playing AVI files on both these players, some downloaded off the net and others I created with Fairuse Wizard. I have had only one file not play at all but I discovered that was a QPEL AVI so that was an easy fix to re-encode. My question is about resolution and aspect ratio. Most of the files I have tried playing on both these machines are elongated vertically. Unfortunately these files are all kinds of different resolutions so it's hard to know where the problem lies. After researching the net for a while I would guess this is an issue with square pixels (1:1 for pc) vs rectangular pixels for TV viewing. I have tried MPEG4Modifier per other relatable posts to change the PAR but no luck. Strange though that the posts actually suggest to make sure the Dar IS set at 1:1. I would have thought that is what is making these files stretch out on the TV. I also learned that the native NTSC resolution is 720x480 and that is due in part to the pixel issue. But I was under the impression that AVIs could be played on a capable player at any resolution or aspect ratio and the player should know it's 1:1 and adjust it on the fly. This is obviously incorrect. I see all kinds of people that have no problems playing AVIs on a DIVX player. They don't mention any resolution issues like this. But I can't imagine this is some unique problem. I've tried changing the display type on the players from 4:3 LB to 4:3 PS to 16:9 but they don't play any differently. I guess that's only for MPEG2 adjustment... Can someone give me an explanation for why these AVIs appear stretched and possible suggestions on fixing it? Now I did re-encode a few of my AVIs to 720x480 and they looked PERFECT on TV. But do I really need to re-encode all my AVIs to match the TV res? I'd hate to lose some quality. Everyone else seems to say to keep res at "640x480" or "640xwhatever" so I'm confused. I like to think of myself as pretty tech-savvy but this one is proving me so very wrong.
I did a quick google on this and came across this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=76828 The link to the tool that Moitah is talking about is: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78050 Sounds interesting.
Max resolution for most players is 720x576. All MPEG4Modifier does is change a flag. Upto the player to read it or not, which is why you found posts recommending 1:1 since if a player doesn't read it, that is what you end up with. My SAP (cheap non DivX certified MTK based one) supports PAR resizing just fine. If the AR is correct with it set to 1:1 though, then you shouldn't be changing it anyway. Like if you have a 2.35:1 encode @ 640x272, then it is supposed to be 1:1. Sounds like the player is just stretching the image (like in the above example the 640x272 encode would be stretched to 640x480 for 4:3), in which case you would need to encode with black bars. I hear that ESS based players like the 642 don't work well with WS TV's.
