Thread: MediaEngine executable update.

Originally Posted by CarComp

Its fully automatic now. It had nothing to do with widescreen monitors... It was just if the movie was "recorded" in widescreen vs. standard. I can detect that now.

Yes buy now I cannot get a movie to look correctly on my screen. A widescreen display streches an image to fill its screen. When a widescreen movie (16:9) is played and forced into a 4:3 aspect ratio which streches it vertically then played on the 16:9 screen which streches it horizontally it looks like it should.

the 16:9 aspect ratio can also be represented a 16/9. 16/9 = 1.77778
that is why some movies have their aspect ratio listed as 1.778:1
4:3 = 4/3 = 1.333 = 1.333:1
Im using the fraction (16/9) in the examples below.

you start with a 16/9 image and multiply its dimentions by 3/4 to get a 4/3 image that fills the screen. (16/9)*(3/4)=(4/3)

then the electronics on the widscreen display multiplies the (4/3) image by (4/3) to get (16/9) and the image is displayed perfectly.

This is how dvd players (atleast all the ones ive owned) work when you set the display screen to 16:9 in their options. Im asking you to implement an option like this. Simply multiply the movies aspect ratio by 3/4 so it looks correct on a widescreen display.

This is how media engine (and anything else that does not support a widescreen display) functions now.

when you send an image already in the (16/9) aspect ratio to a conventional (4/3) it looks correct. The image is a wide screen image with correct black bars on top and bottom.

But when a (16/9) image is sent to a (16/9) display, the electronics multiply the dimentions by (3/4) to get a (64/27) image.
(16/9)*(3/4)= (64/27)

What happens is the black bars stay on top and bottom of the image and it is streched horizontally to fill the screen. You get a really widescreen image with black bars on top and bottom.

mike

ok a quick solution to the problem.

A widescreen display is four thirds (4/3) wider than a conventional 4:3 display. so to fill the entire screen the electronics in the widescreen display multiply the incoming image's aspect ratio by 4/3.

becouse most computer screens and televisons use a 4:3 aspect ratio the incoming image is a conventional 4:3. 4:3 represended as 4/3. (4/3)*(4/3) = 16:9 a 4:3 image is streched to fill a 16:9 screen by multiplying the aspect ratio by 4/3.

to make the image look correct on the widescreen all you have to do is multiply the aspect ratio of the image by 3/4 before you send it to the display. This cancels the (4/3) strech factor of the display.

so, providing you actually have acces to the aspect ratio of the movie in your movie playing all you need to do is multiply that aspect ratio by 3/4 so images look correct on a 16:9 display.

mike

Originally Posted by Michael Szilagyi

so, providing you actually have acces to the aspect ratio of the movie in your movie playing all you need to do is multiply that aspect ratio by 3/4 so images look correct on a 16:9 display.

Actually, it is a little more complicated than that as car-pc users with 16:9 monitors a la Xenarc are sometimes running with near-square pixels (800x480, 848x480, etc) and sometimes running with rectangular pixels (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 etc). You have to take into account not only the aspect ratio of the source and the destination, but the pixel shape in between. Here's how to do it:

1) User specifies the aspect ratio of the display 4:3 or 16:9
2) Program gets the resolution of the video (most all desktop CODEC's decode for square pixels)
3) Program gets the desktop resolution and calculates the aspect ratio of the physical pixels based on the user's specified screen aspect.
4) Program calculates the H/V scaling for the square pixel video to remap it to the aspect of the display pixels.

The exception to these rules is when you want to do something like scale 4:3 video out to fullscreen 16:9 and make it look good.. You can create scaling curves that do various things like scale the center of the image more than the edges and end up with something that looks better than linear scaling.

I am having problems installing the execuable update. I put it in the MediaEngine folder, and double click it....I get an error of "Skins folder not found", so I created an emptly "skins" folder, and tried to re-run the exe, and my whole desktop flashes for 20 seconds when the .exe runs!!!

Whats up? I have my MediaEngine in d:\ProgramFiles\MediaEngine, NOT c:\MediaEngine ....could that be the problem?

it might be hardcoded to look in c:\ :/

Originally Posted by hijinks21

it might be hardcoded to look in c:\ :/

Nope, from my search through the code, nowhere does it say any reference to c: that I can see, other than writing the winamp.ini file for waveoutput (which we'd never use anyway)


Garry

Originally Posted by -al-

I am having problems installing the execuable update. I put it in the MediaEngine folder, and double click it....I get an error of "Skins folder not found", so I created an emptly "skins" folder, and tried to re-run the exe, and my whole desktop flashes for 20 seconds when the .exe runs!!!

Whats up? I have my MediaEngine in d:\ProgramFiles\MediaEngine, NOT c:\MediaEngine ....could that be the problem?

I had the same problem.

check if you have mediaengine.exe in your c: root ... if yes remove it

also check if any ME files is there in the root .. remove it ....

You shall be good to go ...

Mastero

Thanks I'll try it tonight!

It seems that ME needs to be in the root of the C drive. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next version.

Once I put it in the root of C, all was fine.