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[MrHaugen]

I started a new one to prevent any confusion. As I said there are some strange things happening when I'm using ffdshow for resizing. At least compared to ffdshow used with Zoom Player. I'm not 100% sure this is a MC problem, but the ffdshow settings have worked perfectly in Zoom Payer for several years. Ok. Here we go. They say pictures say more than thousand words..

This is a image I took before resize. It will fill the screen completely when the control bar dissappears.



This is the result when resizing to 2600 horizontal and vertical as well as the option "Process pixel aspect ratio internally" and "No aspect ratio correction":



It looks as if there is only resizing of pixels the horizontal way. Anyway, the width decreases...
If "Process pixel aspect ratio internally" are deselected the picture increases in  width, but not all the way.

When I choose "Keep original aspect ratio" the picture also shrinks vertical (when disabling internal ratio correction):



This happens when I reactivate internal aspect ratio correction:




I can not see any way I can resize up to my desired size without shrinking the image horizontally. The only thing that seems to work is to only Specify the horizontal size, but that do not sound right, and I belive the result would not be that great.

Can anyone enlighten me?

[Yaobing]

I started a new one to prevent any confusion. As I said there are some strange things happening when I'm using ffdshow for resizing. At least ...

Why do you need to resize in the first place? In a sense MC resizes your video image to the window size (or fullscreen) and keeps aspect ratio the way you specify (Source ratio, 16:9, 4:3 etc.)

[MrHaugen]

The whole point of the resizing is to blow the picture to the maximum your CPU can take. Picture quality corraction and improvement like sharpening are added. Then the picture gets shrunk to the actual output (monitor, tv or projector).
The bigger you get the resizing the better are the results when it get's to your screen. Just ask mastiff, if you don't belive me.

This is one of the biggest quality improvements, and therefor my number 1 reason to use ffdshow. Even on a 720P projector the quality enhancements are huge. Without this working I would probably have to go back to ZP 

[Mastiff]

He don't even have to ask! I can confirm this. The main reason is that if you sharpen while resizing you will get a sharper, clearer image without the bad side effects a pure sharpening has. I have partly evolved beyond this, to using AVISynth script through FFDShow, but it's really just a variation of the same thing.

[MrHaugen]

Speaking of the devil..
I'll have to look into AVISynth script some time in the future then. If AVISynth script in ffdshow relies on resizing too, there might be a problem with that method as well? Guess, I'm bound to find out sooner or later.

[Alex B]

Wouldn't the "Multiply by" option work? If your source material is DVD Video you could try a setting like 3x or more.

AFAIK, it does not alter the aspect ratio or cropping.


Edit

Or is a resampled image that has identical horizontal and vertical pixel amounts (e.g. 2600 x 2600) somehow a better source for post-processing?

[Yaobing]

OK, I understand the reason now.

I think Alex has the right idea unless, as he mentioned, there is a reason for square size. You resize to the original aspect ratio, and can still use MC in "Source Aspect Ratio" mode.

If you resize to 2600x2600, as I understand it, FFDShow either stretches the video vertically to a square  or pads the video on top and bottom to a square. In the former case, you will have to set MC to "1.78:1" mode (assuming that is your video's ratio) or "Stretch" if your monitor's ratio matches that of the video. In the latter case, you can use "Crop" in MC if your monitor's ratio matches that of the video, otherwise use zoom to adjust.

[MrHaugen]

I'm not sure that an actual square are the main goal here. Do not think that 2600 x 2600 or 3400 x 1900 would make much difference in quality.
I have been following Mastiffs HTPC guide for a couple of years, and he uses the same method. I thought that the "Process pixel aspect ratio internally" are supposed to correct the aspect ratio to whatever it was before. At least that's whats happend in Zoom Player I think. Mab Mastiff can shed some light on the subject?

I CAN however use a size like 2600 x 1560 (that's close to 16:9 I think), but the problem here is that all other video sources will become 16:9. That is not what I want with, for instance, TV series. Most of mine are still 4:3. Even the so called 16:9 material varies alot.

If I use "Multiply by" I will encounter another problem. If I set DVD's to multiply to 4 I will get an upscale result of 2880 x 1920 (original 720 x 480). That will look pretty nice. Great!
With avi's and similar, the source can be around 320x240 and up? If I multiply that I get 1280 x 960, wich I belive will look fare worse than 2880 x 1920 of the DVD's. Correct me if I'm wrong...
And a bigger problem would arise the day you can use HD-DVD and Blue Ray's in MC. They would upscale from 1920 x 1080 to an impressive 7680 x 4320. However I do not belive my processor would be that impressed. It already struggels at 60% - 90% load on my 3.4GHz CPU with my 2600x2600 resizing!

I'm not an expert, but I do belive most of what I'm saying is true. I would really like to know why ffdshow through Media Center have such problems with the horizontal resizing. There ARE ways to go around this problem. Like saving alot of different registry files for each video type with corresponding source aspect ratio. But that is just to silly.

I do understand that ffdshow have been just recently added as feature, and I know that there are child diseases in most newly developed software. But imo I do not belive going around a problem is the correct way of handeling those things. Not that I'm saying you normally do that. Quite the oposit actually.

- Carl

[JimH]

Keep reminding us and eventually we'll understand what to do.  Thanks.

[Yaobing]

Perhaps you can show me how you can achieve your desired result with 2600x2600 in ZoomPlayer. Maybe that will tell me something.

[MrHaugen]

Keep reminding us and eventually we'll understand what to do.  Thanks.

Sorry guys, not my plan to offend any of you....

Perhaps you can show me how you can achieve your desired result with 2600x2600 in ZoomPlayer. Maybe that will tell me something.

I'm at work, so I can't remember exactly what it was now. I'll post some info on this later.

[MrHaugen]

These are the settings I have been using in Zoom Player for a long time.  As you can see there is little that's different from my settings used in ffdshow through MC.

It would be wrong just to open ffdshow in Zoom Player, as the settings in ffdshow seem to be global for all applications using it. So I reloaded an older XP image that I have been using, just to be sure the settings were the same.




The only thing I wondered about is these options in Zoom Player:



These are the only options I found in Zoom Player it self, that had anything to do with aspect ratio. But I don't think it has anything to with DVD's though... Only divx and such.

So what can cause the differences in the horizontal resizing? Anyone got any ideas? I'm clueless...

[MrHaugen]

*bump*

Come an you videoholics; there have to be someone that get's this better than me.