[mythtv-users] MythArchive - Aspect Ratio

[Paul Harrison]

Christopher Maines wrote:
> I tried out svn 10600 and it's almost there - the burned shows play
> back at the proper aspect ratio of 4:3, but the menu images are still
> squashed into letterbox format. I set "Main Menu Aspect Ratio" to 4:3
> and then made two ISO files: one with "Chapter Menu Aspect Ratio" set
> to 4:3 and a second with "Chapter Menu Aspect Ratio" set to Video.
> Both ISOs were identical.
>
>   
Its possible I haven't got things quite right in the dvdauthor.xml file 
yet. I did a lot of testing with various files and menu aspect settings 
and everything seemed to be working as I would have expected but to save 
time I used xine to test the created DVDs and not a standalobe DVD player.

When you say the menus looked squashed do you have black bars at the top 
and bottom with the menu in the middle? Is it both the main menu and 
chapter menu? If you use the G.A.N.T theme does the intro screen shown 
just before the video plays look OK?

> By the way, I noticed that none of the menu navigation pages in either
> the G.A.N.T. or MythCenter themes give you any way of going back to a
> previous menu - there's no "back" button. The only way to get to a
> second or third show that's been burned to the same DVD is to exit the
> player completely and restart it.
>
>   
On my player there is a button on the remote that takes you back to the 
main menu. I think its labeled 'Top Menu' or something like that. I'll 
take a look at adding a back button on the chapter menu in any case.

> I also had a problem with one of the three burned shows - the audio
> was ahead of the video by the end, although they started out together.
> There isn't anything wrong with the show in MythTV. I know this isn't
> necessarily a mytharchive problem, but I've burned about 150 DVDs
> using mythburn in mythtv 0.18 and never had this happen before.
>
>   

Where all the shows from the same source? What type of card? Did you 
cutout commercials?

If the files are from a PVR-x50 type card you could try changing the  
'Always Use Mythtranscode'  setting  so it is selected on the 
MythArchive settings pages. That will always run the files though 
mythtranscode --mpeg2 to clean up the timecodes etc. If the file had a 
cut list then it wont make any difference because mythtrancode is used 
to cut the commercials and at the same time it does the timecode fixups.

> Thanks for all the work. Being able to burn recorded shows to DVD is
> the primary reason I'm using MythTV instead of some other PVR
> solution.
>   
Paul H.