Question about CM's avi to dvd tutorial

[joe14580]

Thanks to da chicken for an excellent tut that got this noob through my first avi to dvd conversions with stunning success .

I have 1 final question as a noob as I soon will be officially a semi-noob . CM gives a "rule of thumb" using Window Media player to determine if the incoming avi file is 16:9. Assuming the input file is 16:9, how can I get the resulting DVD file to fill the tv screen (ntsc formatted burns).Presently the burns look great but have that "wide-screen" look , that is, they don't fill my u.s. tv. Is there some setting I can use ?

Also, CM, as I'm sure your aware, your use of explorer to determine info about the avi file does not pertain to Win2k. I assume it's a WinXP feature. I use Gspot to tell me what I need. Can G-spot "confirm" that it's a 16:9 file in addition to the windoze Media "rule of thumb" you suggest ?

Thanks to you all for patience you all have shown me .

 

[celtic_druid]

Works fine for me with win2k.

For WS-->FS you have two choices:
1) Crop the sides off.
2) Stretch it.

Personally I wouldn't go with either.

GSpot would be fine. If I recall correctly it actually lists the aspect ratio.

 

[ChickenMan]

As C_D said, GSPOT is a great alternative to Right Click/Properties if thats not working on your system.

If the original AVI was 16:9 aspect ratio then I would strongly suggest to leave it that way, quality would severly suffer big time if you try either stretching it or chopping off the sides.

 

[joe14580]

Thanks for the replies, I'll leave well enough alone then .

Celtic, I don't know what's wrong with my Win2k sp4 pro then. I can right click on properties but the vid info is not there . I'll have to poke around on that.

CM, the only other thing I've noticed with using your tut is that occasionally the process will "hang" on a step. Watching it work, it obviously calls into play windows command screens, misc proggies etc. and sometimes it'll sit there hung up. Hitting a button (e.g. "encode") it seems to be waiting for gets it going again . I think windows is busy with something else on occasion and doesn't get the command executed completely, so you have to kick start it again, but all-in-all a great tutorial !!

 

[ChickenMan]

Then maybe there is something else running in the background on your PC. CCE uses ALL the cpu grunt you have. It will generally hang/freeze when you have any overclocking of the CPU or memory. Poor quality memory can also choke CCE.

 

[joe14580]

Then maybe there is something else running in the background on your PC. CCE uses ALL the cpu grunt you have. It will generally hang/freeze when you have any overclocking of the CPU or memory. Poor quality memory can also choke CCE.

CM, hmmm, you may be on to something there. I've got a dual CPU system with the AMD 2800 MP CPU's, Win2kSP4, air-cooled, and 1 gig of "good" 3200 speed memory (memory is rated higher than it needs to be ).

However, it IS overclocked . It benchmarks out to slightly faster than a dual Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz system . It'll rip thru the cce proggie ntsc.mpv file creation conversion step in about 20 minutes .

It's not o/c'ed to the max, it will go faster, and it has been put thru all the 24 hr cpu/memory torture tests to be certain it's stable. But I'll keep an eye on it.

I never looked until now, but I note that CCE really sucks a lot of CPU and 350 meg of memory !

I notice the abberant behavior occurs when I'm running a lot of other proggies simultaneously. It never hangs if all it's running is a conversion (and browsing and running Folding@Home in the background).

Also, I haven't taken the time to tell it to use one of the 2 cpu's exclusively for the conversion proggies and use the other for the O/S and other proggies. I just let windoze sort that out .