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  #1  
Old 06-08-2020, 06:13 PM
madlabs madlabs is offline
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Aspect ratio converters?

Howdy All,

I'd like to convert streaming video to 4:3. I did a search here on the forums and didn't find anything. Taking a look around for aspect converter hardware all I could find is this:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...r.html/reviews

No longer being made. There must be something else out there.

Thanks!
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  #2  
Old 06-08-2020, 10:56 PM
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Penthode Penthode is offline
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I am a broadcast engineer and for the last 25 years the studio interconnections have been SDI or the serial digital interface. SDI is a component video interface that better lends itself to rescaling or aspect ratio conversion with no perceptible quality loss. Our vintage TV video sources from DVD are recorded component video and so if you interface from the DVD player to SDI input of a good quality used broadcast quality rescaler and then afterward convert to composite NTSC, you will maintain the best quality.

I just checked eBay and saw a number of used rescalers with SDI input available. There are cheap HDMI to SDI converters and cheap used SDI to NTSC converter encoders on eBay as well.

That is the way to go if you want professional quality conversation for a couple of hundred bucks maximum.

On the other hand, I convert internet streamed YouTube video to my vintage TV from a Roku 1. It has an internal rescaler which ensures the video is correct 4:3 on its output. Only drawback to the Roku 1 is the audio output is high and overmodulates cheapo RF modulators. A simple resistive antenuator fixes that.

Last edited by Penthode; 06-08-2020 at 11:01 PM.
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Old 06-09-2020, 09:20 AM
madlabs madlabs is offline
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Penthode,

If you are a broadcast engineer and a Roku is good enough for your vintage TV watching, I am sure that it is good enough for me. I am just tired of the side bars and lost screen space when streaming video to my Predicta. I have never used a Roku and am not sure how they work, but will any of them work? I took a look and the Roku I does not seem available. Is there much fussing about with the Roku or once I set it up will it just convert whatever content I stream?

I did go look on epay for a hardware rescaler and there are a lot of choices. Any recommendations for a lower end unit? I don't need broadcast quality, just to get rid of the dang side bars.

Thanks for the reply!

EDIT: Did some looking at Roku and it seems that they are used with a TV. I am just using a laptop to stream content to my TV. So the Roku will not work for me?
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Old 06-09-2020, 09:55 AM
madlabs madlabs is offline
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Man, am I out of my depth. I have been looking at all sorts of converters but none seem to mention 4:3 specifically. There seem to be a lot made by Black Magic in my price range but I have no idea what I need. Where is a good place to go school up?

My ideal would be a hardware solution under $150. All I wanna do is get rid of the dang side bars!
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  #5  
Old 06-09-2020, 10:54 AM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by madlabs View Post
Man, am I out of my depth. I have been looking at all sorts of converters but none seem to mention 4:3 specifically. There seem to be a lot made by Black Magic in my price range but I have no idea what I need. Where is a good place to go school up?

My ideal would be a hardware solution under $150. All I wanna do is get rid of the dang side bars!
I use a DHO18 HDMI convertor to record on my Hard Drive Recorder. It seems to do a decent job, although I'm not that fussy about geometry. It eliminated margins in the picture.
For under $10 USD , it's worth trying!
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Old 06-09-2020, 01:08 PM
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Electronic M Electronic M is offline
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Edit: madlabs I wrote this post on and off over a few hours last night and today and forgot who I was responding to...I assumed a less knowledge in writing this than I would have if I had remembered you were asking the original question. Whether that's good or bad I'll let you decide.

How well do you understand aspect ratio and the different ways of displaying it in other ratios?

When you display a 16x9 source on a 4x3 screen there's innescapable tradeoffs to do it. You can either letterbox the content (which let's you see the entire source image with correct geometry but there will be black bars above and below), you can 'pan-and-scan' crop the center 4x3 out of the film (many VHS film releases did this, geometry is maintained and there are no bars on screen, but you can't see stuff near the edges of 16x9 programs because it gets cut off), or you can horizontally compress the image (no black bars and you can see the whole source image, but noticable geometric distortion which will make round things like clocks into tall ovals and make people wierdly skinny)....
So you have to choose whether you want to letterbox, crop, or squeeze the image.
Knowing exact equipment you plan to use to stream the content, the 4x3 display you want to watch it on and the inputs and outputs of both helps...it is possible the equipment you have is improperly set up. A new program filmed and recorded in 16x9* should never have black bars on the sides when displayed on a 4x3 TV...if it does the player and or any signal converters between it and the TV are incorrectly configured or badly designed.

*Some 4x3 content got converted to 16x9 by pillarboxing it (take a 4x3 source and stick black bars on the sides so it fits into a 16x9 frame)...if you take such a fake 16X9 video and convert back to 4x3 the pillar boxing may remain and have letterbox added to it putting a black ball around the image...some DTV and cable stations here (especially a few years ago) would sometimes screw up and do this wrong 2-3 consecutive times on commercials and you'd end up with a 7" image with a black border on a 19" TV.

I have a 1.5 year old desktop I built myself from all new parts except the graphics card...The graphics card is a ~10-15 year old PCIe x16 graphics card with a S-video output (S-video is 4x3 and adapts to composite with a 1$ connector adapter...I use this to drive 4x3 aspect ratio CRT TVs. The system runs windows 10 and while win 10 will balk about the old graphics card it will find a generic driver for it that will work (windows 7 supports older graphics cards better but there are potential security issues if you use the computer for things other than video streaming). I wanted to drive an HD monitor off HDMI at the same time so I went into the BIOS and configured my machine so that the onboard HDMI port on the mother board and the graphics card are both simultaneously active. You probably will have to learn and play with the menus in in windows by right clicking and opening 'display settings' in windows...some important things are burried in some cases. I prefer to use VLC media player (which can also play streaming content) for everything because I can change aspect ratio, crop and zoom in VLC to make video to conform to any of the standard rescaling methods (and a few non-standard ones).

That works for a desktop and displaying the video correctly on only one monitor at a time...If I want to display the same video on both my 4x3 and 16x9 monitors at once then one won't look right... For my laptop and my friends laptop and any other HDMI source I use the following chain: (there is a thread here on videokarma describing this and giving links to purchase with a title about removing letterbox, read it before trying to buy any of this) HDMI from laptop (or other media player) to an HDMI-to-composite AV * adapter box the composite output goes to an Exitron video scaler (which has horizontal and vertical size and centering controls which allow you to shrink and stretch either axis to achieve any standard aspect ratio scaling) the VGA output goes to a VGA to composite/S-video converter and you plug the composite or S-video from it (and the audio from the HDMITOAV converter) into your TV...
The VGA to composite converter has image scaling capability similar to the Exitron so if your computer or other streaming device has VGA output you could potentially use JUST the VGA to composite converter...also if you use the full system and the Exitron does not have enough control range the VGA to composite converter may be able to extend that where you need...

The problem with aspect ratio conversion is broadcast equipment is expensive and somewhat complicated, consumer gear often does not give you a choice which method to use, does a poor job of doing what it does, and or in the case of my system is a bit cumbersome to configure.

*Note if you are splitting the HDMI to drive both the adapter box and a HDTV some adapter boxes will only accept 480 or 720 and will force the source to run in that mode so the HDTV won't have a 1080 feed...to get around that I feed the HDMI splitter output to the input of my 'HDML cloner box' (it is a media recorder player recorder I use to record and play back HD material from the HDMI output of my cable box, VWestlife on YouTube did a review of the HDML cloner box) then take the HDMI output of the cloner box and feed that to the HDMI to AV converter...this scheme ensures any HDMI source will display in proper HD on my HDTV and simultaneously display in proper 4x3 standard def on my old standard def CRT sets. This bit of the equation I just figured out last night (I had been putting it off).

Why would I want to watch the same video on a new HDTV AND a 1954 vintage RCA 21CT55 (the final version of RCAs first color TV chassis) at the same time....well because I'm a weirdo and a colossal vintage TV nerd and much of what I watch is newer shows.

Quote:
Originally Posted by madlabs View Post

EDIT: Did some looking at Roku and it seems that they are used with a TV. I am just using a laptop to stream content to my TV. So the Roku will not work for me?
The Roku connects to the internet and plays the stream it's self without need for a laptop... granted the older models with analog output have lost software support for a lot of features so exactly what you can play I don't know (I have one I need to try out one day, it's been catching dust since I got it used for 1$).

One easy option to have correct aspect ratio on an old 4x3 TV is to get a VCR, LD player and or DVD player and a collection of tapes and discs and just watch vintage material on it.

I've got every vintage format imaginable hooked up (from 70's EIAJ and UMATIC, Betamax videotape CED/selectavision, LD, HDDVD, and more common formats like VHS, DVD and Bluray in addition to the new devices...my big equipment rack is neat and full but the spaghetti monster in back is epic...I need 3 power strips just to feed it all.
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Last edited by Electronic M; 06-09-2020 at 01:15 PM.
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  #7  
Old 06-09-2020, 02:19 PM
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Electronic M Electronic M is offline
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The gear in this topic is what I use. http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=271494 The only downsides are panning is not perfectly smooth, action scenes with a lot of camera changes or motion can get choppy, and sometimes there artifacts from the down-convert, up-convert, down convert cycle... There may be better options.
Edit: setting the Extron to 480x640 output has eliminated all noticable artifacts and reduced motion glitches...shoulda done that from the start!
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Last edited by Electronic M; 06-09-2020 at 10:09 PM.
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Old 06-09-2020, 09:26 PM
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Penthode Penthode is offline
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There is many good points here. And there is a variety of alternatives available.

A graphics card with either s-video or composite output is good. I only mention the broadcast equipment because I recall buying the stuff new 20 years ago for tens of thousands of dollars and now exactly the same stuff is worth a hundred bucks.

Personally I prefer center cut 16:9 on 4:3 even though the captioning may be cut off. Then again I prefer older programming on older sets. There were many older movies, television programs and series I never had time to watch in the 60's and 70's I can watch on line or off DVD. And all of it was 4:3 or close enough.
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Old 06-09-2020, 10:13 PM
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Electronic M Electronic M is offline
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I prefer either letterbox or cropped. The native output of my HDMI converter boxes is horizontally compressed (though I'm sure many source devices have HDMI settings to fix that if you aren't trying to split the HDMI source to also drive 16x9 HDTV simultaneously.
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Old 06-10-2020, 09:30 AM
madlabs madlabs is offline
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EM, I am profoundly ignorant in this area as your very well written treatise informed me. I knew I didn't know much but wow. Thanks for taking the time to write that up. The devil is always in the details.

I think for me that cropping is likely the best alternative. I wish that I could just use my DVD player as everything always looks the best from DVD. However, much of the stuff I watch isn't available and it would be an expensive undertaking. There are only a few things I watch multiple times. Most content I watch was originally recorded in 4:3, when I watch newer stuff I do so on a newer TV.

Just so we know what hardware I have, I run the HDMI from the laptop to an HDMI to Composite converter and then into a BT RF modulator. The HDMI converter is a cheapie, I am totally willing to buy a better one.

I'm looking into VLC. Quite a bit of stuff I play is from archive.org so I should be able to DL it and then play through VLC. I will try that this week and see what I get. It doesn't seem at a glance that I can play Amazon Prime content through VLC, is that correct? Amazon has been adding quite a few oldies lately and I do watch a fair bit from there.

I can see I need to do some more reading. I need to learn more about 4:3 content that has been converted to 16:9 because I think that is what I watch most. Thanks to all for your time and I will be back with more questions.
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Old 06-10-2020, 10:56 AM
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Electronic M Electronic M is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by madlabs View Post
EM, I am profoundly ignorant in this area as your very well written treatise informed me. I knew I didn't know much but wow. Thanks for taking the time to write that up. The devil is always in the details.

I think for me that cropping is likely the best alternative. I wish that I could just use my DVD player as everything always looks the best from DVD. However, much of the stuff I watch isn't available and it would be an expensive undertaking. There are only a few things I watch multiple times. Most content I watch was originally recorded in 4:3, when I watch newer stuff I do so on a newer TV.

Just so we know what hardware I have, I run the HDMI from the laptop to an HDMI to Composite converter and then into a BT RF modulator. The HDMI converter is a cheapie, I am totally willing to buy a better one.

I'm looking into VLC. Quite a bit of stuff I play is from archive.org so I should be able to DL it and then play through VLC. I will try that this week and see what I get. It doesn't seem at a glance that I can play Amazon Prime content through VLC, is that correct? Amazon has been adding quite a few oldies lately and I do watch a fair bit from there.

I can see I need to do some more reading. I need to learn more about 4:3 content that has been converted to 16:9 because I think that is what I watch most. Thanks to all for your time and I will be back with more questions.
I don't have prime so I don't know/haven't looked in to VLC compatibility.

It may be possible to make your HDMI converter and PC work as is with VLC. If you are able to run a 16X9 aspect ratio program (assuming your computer sees the HDMITOAV converter as a 16x9 device and it by default displays as full screen 4x3 compressed on your vintage TV then it may work. You may want to try to go into display settings on your PC and try to set aspect ratio the computer sends via HDMI to the device to 4x3...menus vary a lot between OS and hardware combos and sometimes if it exists it is burried in advanced administrator settings in sub-menus of sub-menus so you gotta explore thoroughly...it should be a lot easier (or it may be absolutely necessary) to get what you want out of VLC configuration if you can get the OS display driver to treat the HDMITOAV box as a 4x3 device (might be good to set a circular object as your desktop background to see if the computer is feeding the converter 16x9 and the converter is feeding the TV a horizontally compressed version (or exactly what its doing). Setting OS aspect ratio is easier in windows 7 IIRC... sometimes it is best to have a separate media PC so you can mess with settings without fear of messing up your main rig and so you can install less secure or enjoyable for normal computing OS and hardware combos that better support media playback.

In VLC if you press the A key on your keyboard aspect ratio and will toggle through a bunchof options (shift+A is audio output device, though I may have shift backwards) and C (or shift C is crop) there may be a zoom or stretch too.... Google VLC keyboard shortcuts and you may find what you want. Play with those settings and common video aspect ratio formats and see how it changes things. VLC forgets those settings Everytime you close it and returns to default when opened so if you mess anything up reopening VLC should get you back where you started, downside is you have to tweak it for everything you open.

I wish I had more exact guidance on this, but since I wanted to have the same HDMI simultaneously feed a 16x9 set correctly and a cropped 4x3 image to a vintage set I didn't explore the option of setting aspect ratio of the HDMI at the PC in depth in my setup...most of what I know comes from playing with what I have, and much of the rest is looking analytically at everything new I see.

There's a bunch of different approaches to fitting 4x3 into 16x9 some common ones are the standard pillarboxing, horizontal stretch, making the pillars a blury mirror of adjacent video and non-linear stretch (ie leave most of the center barely stretched and stretch the edges more....you see this more in the menus of HDTVs than broadcast). Newer documentaries sometimes mish-mash formats and conversion techniques in ways that can make no single setting satisfying over the entire program.

Been a few years since I messed with it but I have a D-Link DSM-520 media player that can stream some content from the web or a personal media server and play files off a USB...it's probably more than 15 years old and I only used the USB playback functionality so what it will stream today I don't know...I do know some video formats 5-7 years ago were not able to be played so what value it would be to you I can't say...it did have composite output and availability to configure aspect ratio handling IIRC.
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Last edited by Electronic M; 06-10-2020 at 11:20 AM.
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Old 06-10-2020, 07:23 PM
Outland Outland is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Penthode View Post
I am a broadcast engineer and for the last 25 years the studio interconnections have been SDI or the serial digital interface. SDI is a component video interface that better lends itself to rescaling or aspect ratio conversion with no perceptible quality loss. Our vintage TV video sources from DVD are recorded component video and so if you interface from the DVD player to SDI input of a good quality used broadcast quality rescaler and then afterward convert to composite NTSC, you will maintain the best quality.

I just checked eBay and saw a number of used rescalers with SDI input available. There are cheap HDMI to SDI converters and cheap used SDI to NTSC converter encoders on eBay as well.

That is the way to go if you want professional quality conversation for a couple of hundred bucks maximum.

On the other hand, I convert internet streamed YouTube video to my vintage TV from a Roku 1. It has an internal rescaler which ensures the video is correct 4:3 on its output. Only drawback to the Roku 1 is the audio output is high and overmodulates cheapo RF modulators. A simple resistive antenuator fixes that.
So this setup, HDMI > SDI (converter) then SDI > Composite (rescaler), would letterbox 16:9 HD content, specifically through the rescaler?

How would this setup handle HDCP from HDMI?

Thanks for sharing.
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Old 06-14-2020, 09:11 PM
centralradio centralradio is offline
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It maybe a little off topic.Sorry .I've been using a Aluratek DTV converter box.It does playback downloaded YT videos from a thumb drive in letterboxed and adjust to 4.3 .It also records good quality standard HD TV to the thumb drive from its DTV tuner only.Too bad...

Paid $30 bucks at Best Buys a couple years ago.Walmart has a similar box for $40 bucks now in the store.I should grab the Walmart box and see if it a has all the features like the Aluratek has..

Dont bother with the Sharper Image tiny digital video recorder with the built in TV screen.It records and plays back from its inside memory or a mini SDcard .I tried it here and it had issues as audio and video going out of sync about 10 minutes into recording a video.Also it had crappy video capture bitrate .looked worse then a video tape recorded in SLP/EP mode on cheap tape..I did not waste my time playing any downloaded YT videos.Its going back to my sister.

Last edited by centralradio; 06-14-2020 at 09:14 PM.
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Old 09-04-2020, 04:14 PM
user181 user181 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Outland View Post
So this setup, HDMI > SDI (converter) then SDI > Composite (rescaler), would letterbox 16:9 HD content, specifically through the rescaler?

How would this setup handle HDCP from HDMI?

Thanks for sharing.

Did you ever get this resolved? I'm in need of this type of solution now too, and am trying to figure out the best way to do it.

I have an HDMI-only Roku that I want to use with a 4:3 TV and I don't like the horizontal squeezing of the image from the HDMI-to-composite converter that I have. The Roku player has no option to choose a 4:3 output, so I need to find something that will center-crop the 16:9 image, or add letterboxing to it.

I watch a lot of 4:3 content and really don't want a solution that would end up putting black bars around the entire perimeter.

How have you guys solved this?
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Old 09-04-2020, 04:19 PM
Outland Outland is offline
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My solution was to get one of these and an HDCP stripper. This way, the playback device thinks it's a regular 1080p HDTV.

This will letterbox the content, so you will still be stuck with borders on 4:3 content through this setup. Also, I haven't actually tested this yet.
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