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Black Borders and DVD Movies!

Mace1370Mace1370 Registered User regular
edited June 2007 in Games and Technology
Hey guys. I'm sure you are all familiar with the black, horizontal borders that surround your movies while you watch them on a computer monitor. However, I have noticed that when I watch movies with a 16x9 resolution on a 1920x1200 monitor (which is 16x10) that I see double black borders, which is very irritating. However, this only happens in specific media players.

Let me illustrate my problem with pretty pictures! While running a 1920x1200 display (Dell 24" widescreen) and playing a 16x9 DVD movie in Windows Media Player I see this:

singlebordercq2.jpg

The red part of the image is where the video of the movie is taking place. Notice how there is a black horizontal border above and below the video image. Now, if I play this exact same DVD movie in any other movie player (like Power DVD, or Nero Showtime) I see this:

doubleborderwp6.jpg

Notice how there are now two borders above and below the video image, one is a dark gray color and the other is a solid black.

My theory is that the video image sent to the software player has this "dark gray" border in it to create the 16x9 video image, and WMP simply chooses to either not play it or use the same color as the second, black/darker border.

Regardless of this my problem is simple: how can I make Nero Showtime (or any other player than WMP) not show the second "dark gray" border? You may wonder why I just don't watch my movies with WMP. The answer is simple: WMP can't play HD DVDs (and Nero Showtime can), which have the same problem as normal DVDs.

Help would be greatly appreciated!

Mace1370 on

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    mntorankusumntorankusu I'm not sure how to use this thing.... Registered User regular
    edited June 2007
    Lower the brightness setting in Nero until the gray border is the same color as the black one. The brightness of the picture affects the gray part of the border because it's actually a part of the image, and it doesn't affect the black one because it's being added later.

    You might need to mess with the contrast too, to make it look good.

    mntorankusu on
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    The DeliveratorThe Deliverator Slingin Pies The California BurbclavesRegistered User regular
    edited June 2007
    Ok, video on the DVD disk is in 16:9, this includes the "dark grey" border you're seeing, which is the same as the "black" border on the first one. This is added because not all movies are shot in 16:9. The aspect ratio of a cinema relase can vary widely, so the black bars are added to make it fit a 16:9 screen. On a 16:10 monitor, the dvd software adds the extra "black" on top and bottom to keep the aspect ratio correct. The difference between WMP and the other players is that WMP is actually being wrong, and stretching the video to fit. Get used to the double black border, or watch your video stretched slightly. A good player wont let you do that though.

    Edit: or you can fix the contrast/brightness on your screen, that works too.

    The Deliverator on
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    Mace1370Mace1370 Registered User regular
    edited June 2007
    Thanks for the fast replies. I tried changing the brightness/contrast ratios and that did the trick. I turned out -18 brightness and +18 contrast was perfect. However, for some reason this doesn't work when I have AnyDVD HD running. When AnyDVD HD running Nero Showtime completely ignores any changes I make to the brightness or contrast.I assume this is a bug with AnyDVD HD. Should I take this to their forums, or do you guys know how to fix this?

    Edit: Actually, I tried turning off AnyDVD HD to see what would happen. Turns out Nero Showtime makes the changes to brightness and contrast when playing DVDs, regardless of whether AnyDVD is running. HD DVDs, however, are not affected by any changes to brightness and contrast.

    Edit 2: I just altered the settings through my video card and that did the trick. No idea why changing them through Nero Showtime directly didn't do anythign, though. Anyways, thanks for the help. Case closed!

    Mace1370 on
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