Supacon
As much as I love Virtual DJ, it's almost like Atomix has never heard of the idea of different aspect ratios for PC Monitors, TVs, and source video and photos. After all this time, and as mature and evolved as VirtualDJ has become, now with the release of v5.1, why on earth is there still NO USEFUL WAY to control or set the aspect ratio, and have the software automatically play videos at their correct ratio?
If I play a cropped widescreen 16:9 video (as virtually all Hi Definition content is), on a 4:3 Standard TV, there should be black borders on the top and bottom.
Likewise, if one plays 4:3 stuff on a 16:9 widescreen TV, by default, there should be black borders on the sides so that the girls dancing around don't look like they've just gained 150 pounds.
It would be also nice to have some kind of a "zoom" or "auto crop" function that one could activate so that videos that already have borders would fill the screen properly without a lot of manual intervention... perhaps a file specific setting for each video, even, so have the user zoom in to fill the screen appropriately.
I'd think that aspect ratio control would be obvious for software designed to play video. Otherwise one would have to manually re-encode every single video they get so that the aspect ratio is forced to the size of the screen, and manually add in black borders, which would make encodes bigger and really useless for playback on systems that already have the correct aspect.
In the video options, one should be able to set which aspect they are using for cases where they are using a 4:3 aspect ratio on widescreen TVs and the image is stretched to fit, so that way the DJ can compensate for a Bar or other venue having a stupid video setup (really, about the only kind I've ever seen thus far... all these bars with these beautiful supersized widescreen Hi-Def LCDs with the standard definition 4:3 content stretched across so everything looks awful).
Also, just a note that there are four very common aspect ratios in use today:
5:4 - 1280x1024 17" and 19" LCD monitors
3:4 - "Standard" TV and PC Monitors (i.e. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1600x1200, etc)
16:10 - Widescreen PC Monitors (i.e. 1440x900 19" LCDs, 1680x1050 20" LCDs, 1920x1200 24" LCDs)
16:9 - Widescreen TVs and most Hi Definition films (i.e. 1366x768 "720p" HiDef, and 1920x1080 "1080p" Hi Def screens)
Fixing this would be a BIG step in making VirtualDJ (and its users) much more professional.
P.S.
I also just got the idea to have an option that will scale the Skin's preview windows to the aspect ratio of the actual video output, regardless of the size/ratio that it is in the skin... so if some guy makes square video preview windows in a skin, it'll still put extra black bars on top to make it look like the actual output window.
If I play a cropped widescreen 16:9 video (as virtually all Hi Definition content is), on a 4:3 Standard TV, there should be black borders on the top and bottom.
Likewise, if one plays 4:3 stuff on a 16:9 widescreen TV, by default, there should be black borders on the sides so that the girls dancing around don't look like they've just gained 150 pounds.
It would be also nice to have some kind of a "zoom" or "auto crop" function that one could activate so that videos that already have borders would fill the screen properly without a lot of manual intervention... perhaps a file specific setting for each video, even, so have the user zoom in to fill the screen appropriately.
I'd think that aspect ratio control would be obvious for software designed to play video. Otherwise one would have to manually re-encode every single video they get so that the aspect ratio is forced to the size of the screen, and manually add in black borders, which would make encodes bigger and really useless for playback on systems that already have the correct aspect.
In the video options, one should be able to set which aspect they are using for cases where they are using a 4:3 aspect ratio on widescreen TVs and the image is stretched to fit, so that way the DJ can compensate for a Bar or other venue having a stupid video setup (really, about the only kind I've ever seen thus far... all these bars with these beautiful supersized widescreen Hi-Def LCDs with the standard definition 4:3 content stretched across so everything looks awful).
Also, just a note that there are four very common aspect ratios in use today:
5:4 - 1280x1024 17" and 19" LCD monitors
3:4 - "Standard" TV and PC Monitors (i.e. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1600x1200, etc)
16:10 - Widescreen PC Monitors (i.e. 1440x900 19" LCDs, 1680x1050 20" LCDs, 1920x1200 24" LCDs)
16:9 - Widescreen TVs and most Hi Definition films (i.e. 1366x768 "720p" HiDef, and 1920x1080 "1080p" Hi Def screens)
Fixing this would be a BIG step in making VirtualDJ (and its users) much more professional.
P.S.
I also just got the idea to have an option that will scale the Skin's preview windows to the aspect ratio of the actual video output, regardless of the size/ratio that it is in the skin... so if some guy makes square video preview windows in a skin, it'll still put extra black bars on top to make it look like the actual output window.
Inviato Sat 12 Jul 08 @ 8:13 pm
hippydog
Ditto... what he said :)
Inviato Mon 14 Jul 08 @ 11:49 am
Supacon
Oops, a correction, in my list of aspect ratios, "standard" aspect ratio is 4:3, not 3:4, but I'm sure you all knew what I meant!
Inviato Mon 14 Jul 08 @ 1:08 pm
hippydog
ok.. gonna have to retract my 'Ditto'..
I'm completely against this 4:3 thing.. 3:4, sure! but 4:3? thats crazy talk...
;)
I'm completely against this 4:3 thing.. 3:4, sure! but 4:3? thats crazy talk...
;)
Inviato Mon 14 Jul 08 @ 5:21 pm
glenarch
It is an issue of the file being played not having the propper ID flag set in the header of the video clip. If your video driver is set to a correct resolution for you aspect ratio on the monitor (1024x768 for 4:3 or 1440x900 for 16:9 and so on) the video driver will handle the the scaling automaticly. Video files must be either MPEG4 or MOD format. you can set the flag with a program called SDCopy for widescreen (the defualt in all windows OSs is 4:3)
Inviato Sat 13 Sep 08 @ 12:45 am
Supacon
What? VirtualDJ doesn't care what the video header says, that was the whole point of my post. It just stretches it to fill the screen no matter what the actual aspect ratio of the video is set to.
One could assume that the display output of a computer is set to the same aspect ratio as the screen it is connected to, but in real world DJ scenarios, things aren't always this pristine. Many, many bars out there are still hooking things up through some crappy compisite to RF modulator to a distribution system that goes to a bunch of TVs that could be of either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect...
My idea was to allow the DJ to control the actual output aspect ratio of VirtualDJ to compensate for these less than ideal scenarios, but default to sizing the videos appropriately for the aspect ratio of the output.
P.S.
MOD format? The only MOD format that I know about is Amiga MOD tracker music files from the early nineties... VirtualDJ supports a whole host of codecs. x264 works well.
One could assume that the display output of a computer is set to the same aspect ratio as the screen it is connected to, but in real world DJ scenarios, things aren't always this pristine. Many, many bars out there are still hooking things up through some crappy compisite to RF modulator to a distribution system that goes to a bunch of TVs that could be of either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect...
My idea was to allow the DJ to control the actual output aspect ratio of VirtualDJ to compensate for these less than ideal scenarios, but default to sizing the videos appropriately for the aspect ratio of the output.
P.S.
MOD format? The only MOD format that I know about is Amiga MOD tracker music files from the early nineties... VirtualDJ supports a whole host of codecs. x264 works well.
Inviato Sat 18 Oct 08 @ 8:39 pm
DJShahar.com
actually..
http://www.virtualdj.com/addons/2296/ScreenResizer.html
give it a try.
it just needs presets for specific size monitors /tv / projecotr/ etc.
but if you''re using the same screen everytime, then just set the x+y limit and that's it.
http://www.virtualdj.com/addons/2296/ScreenResizer.html
give it a try.
it just needs presets for specific size monitors /tv / projecotr/ etc.
but if you''re using the same screen everytime, then just set the x+y limit and that's it.
Inviato Sun 19 Oct 08 @ 1:09 pm
Supacon
Yeah, I'm aware of the screen resizer, but this still would require you to manually change the screen size every time you put a new video on - most modern videos are being made in widescreen, but you see all kinds. Anything more than a few years old tends to be in 4:3.
When encoding videos, it is sensible to crop the black borders off, but this isn't possible because virtualdj won't fit the video to the screen correctly like any video player software does...
Although I find the video resizer handy from time to time for broken or badly encoded videos, it's far from a solution to this issue.
When encoding videos, it is sensible to crop the black borders off, but this isn't possible because virtualdj won't fit the video to the screen correctly like any video player software does...
Although I find the video resizer handy from time to time for broken or badly encoded videos, it's far from a solution to this issue.
Inviato Wed 22 Oct 08 @ 1:21 am