Anthem D2/D2v/AVM50/AVM50v/ARC1 tweaking guide - Page 341

OK, the two absolute musts:

1) Squish 16:9 content into a "4:3" area (I'm confused if it can do this).
2) Crop/stretch scope content into a 16:9 area (I know it can do this).

Ah, so I think (and from your sig) you're trying to use an anamorphic lens on a projector but not have a sled that moves the lens out of the way for non-scope content.

I don't have the answer for you, but I'm pretty sure that this would require a custom scale out setting and not a crop setting. Crop removes part of the picture before output, scale just distorts it. And it's the latter you'd want to do with a 16:9 image.

OK let's try and start with the basics. First it helps to know that the Anthem converts all video input it is going to process to 1920x1080p, so when you see numbers in the custom crop info, that's what they refer to.

Second, a lot of this material is covered in probably confusing detail in the posts linked off the first post of this thread -- see the "Fun With Custom Cropping and Scaling section of those links.

So what is all this stuff?

Crop Input extracts a subset of the input video. The crop can never be bigger than the actual input frame in either dimension, but it can be smaller. The 4:3 and 16:9 crops are simply pre-defined crops. Imagine an input video frame that is the shape of a rectangle. Suppose it is a 4:3 frame from an SDTV channel. If you apply the 4:3 crop to it the crop just fits both horizontally and vertically. But if you apply the 16:9 crop to it the shape doesn't match. If you make the crop match the height of the image then the sides of the crop would be off the image left and right. As I said, you can't do that. Both dimensions of the crop have to fit WITHIN the pixels of the actual input frame.

So what to do? Well if you think about it, any given input frame is either going to be wider aspect ratio than the crop, narrower than the crop, or just right. In this case the 4:3 input frame is narrower than the 16:9 crop.

So instead of making the crop match the input in height, the Anthem makes it match in width. But wait! If it is going to match in width and still be a 16:9 crop that means the height must be made shorter. I.e., you have to discard some of the input image top and bottom.

It might help to draw a picture of a 4:3 rectangle and then put a 16:9 rectangle on it that just matches in width. See? The 16:9 crop is going to "crop out" a 16:9 wide subset of the 4:3 input image that just matches in width but discards some of the top and bottom of the 4:3 input image.

Why would you want to do this? Well suppose your SDTV channel was presenting a letter-boxed movie -- a 16:9 movie embedded in the 4:3 broadcast frame with black bars top and bottom to make up the difference in shape.

Applying a 16:9 crop to that input video extracts the 16:9 movie from the center of that 4:3 frame.

Now suppose you are watching an HDTV channel broadcasting at 1080i. It will be broadcasting a 16:9 frame. But sometimes what is shown in that broadcast is actually an SDTV program, scaled up to 1080i by the broadcast station and fleshed out with pillar box bars on the left and right to make up the 16:9 shape.

If you apply a 16:9 crop to that it just fits. The Anthem has no work to do. It will pass on to the scaler the incoming video just as broadcast -- i.e., a 4:3 image embedded in a 16:9 frame with pillar box bars on either side.

Suppose you want the Anthem to stretch that 4:3 image out to fill the screen left to right -- getting rid of the pillar box bars at the expense of distorting the image (circles now look like wide ovals). The problem is, the Anthem has no way of knowing which pixels are real image and which are the pillar box bars added by the studio.

But wait! You can tell the Anthem. Simply apply a 4:3 crop to that input.

Now if the 4:3 crop is as wide as the broadcast frame (including the embedded pillar box bar pixels which are part of the image the studio sends out -- remember the Anthem can't know which pixels are real and which are pillar bars) then the height of the crop must be too tall. Again you can never have a crop that is BIGGER than the input image in either dimension.

So instead the 4:3 crop is set to match the HEIGHT of the 16:9 frame. But that must mean that the width of the crop is narrower than the width of the input frame (draw a picture here, again, if you need to). Indeed! That's just what you want! A 4:3 crop applied to a 16:9 frame will extract the 4:3 subset from the middle of that frame -- which just happens to be the pixels that make up the embedded SDTV program content.

Finally, suppose you have an HDTV station broadcasting a 16:9 frame at 1080i, but at the moment what it is broadcasting is SDTV program content -- and that program content is an SDTV version of a letter boxed 16:9 movie.

What you will see is that the movie is surrounded by black on all 4 sides. The SDTV program content adds black bars top and bottom to pad the 16:9 movie to a 4:3 shape, and the HDTV broadcast station then pads that 4:3 shape with bars left and right to pad it out to a 16:9 shape again. The result is that the 16:9 movie "floats" in the middle of the larger 16:9 frame.

Well if you apply a 16:9 crop to that nothing will happen. The input frame is ALREADY 16:9. The Anthem doesn't know that a bunch of those pixels are just black bar pixels.

And if you apply a 4:3 crop to that what you will extract is the 4:3 subset of the 16:9 input frame (remember this happens automatically because the Anthem just has to compare the aspect ratio of the crop to the aspect ratio of the frame and figure out whether it is matching height or width according to the rule that neither dimension of the crop can be bigger than the actual input frame). That's part-way there. You have now thrown away the left and right pillar box bars applied by the HDTV broadcast station. But the top and bottom pillar box bars applied to make the 16:9 movie fit into the SDTV 4:3 shape are still there.

So what's to do?

Well as it turns out, you can specify a Custom Crop setting in the Anthem. Again, think of this with respect to the 1920x1080p internal video frame of the Anthem processor. If you make the Custom Crop smaller in BOTH dimensions then you will discard part of the image on the left and right AND part of the image on the top an bottom. With just the right pair of numbers you can extract precisely that 16:9 movie, embedded in the 4:3 SDTV frame, which is embedded in the HDTV broadcast.

The math is shown in one of those posts linked off the first post of this thread.

Custom Cropping gives you an additional feature which can sometimes be handy. If either dimension of the Custom Crop is smaller than the basic 1920x1080p input buffer, then you can ALSO specify the centering of the Crop on that buffer.

Suppose you have a "wider than wide screen" movie in a 16:9 HDTV frame. E.g., a 2.35:1 movie for example. And suppose you would prefer not to see the letter box bars top and bottom which are included in the broadcast to pad that move out the 16:9 shape of the HDTV frame. Well again you can specify a Custom Crop that is the full 1920 wide but is less than 1080 high. By default that will be centered vertically on the image. But sometimes you will get these broadcasts of foreign films where they put subtitles BELOW the image -- in what would otherwise be the empty letter-box bar below the image. Well if you crop down the the shape of the movie you will lose the subtitles. And if you widen the height of the crop to include the subtitles you will also retain a portion of the letter-box bar above the image as well.

But instead you can make a custom crop which is just big enough to stretch from the bottom of the subtitles up through to the top of the movie -- and SHIFT IT DOWN in the image buffer so that it is no longer centered but is positioned to show the subtitles.

OK that's the input side of things. But we aren't done yet.

The shape of the output video is defined by the video output resolution you have specified for your display. Usually that will be precisely 16:9, but sometimes not depending on your display.

The shape of the output is now a THIRD rectangle to consider -- along with the shape of the input frame and the shape of the crop applied to that input frame.

It is the job of the Anthem Scaler to adjust the shape of the CROPPED INPUT to match the shape of the desired output. Again you just have two rectangles at this point. The two of them either match in aspect ratio (resolution is not important here, just the shape) or one of the rectangles is wider than the other.

You remember that the key rule for Cropping is that the crop can not be bigger than the input frame in either dimension. Well the key rule for scaling is that every pixel included in the Crop must make it on screen. That means the Crop shape must fit INSIDE the screen shape.

So suppose you have a 4:3 Crop shape and 16:9 TV? Well since the Crop has to fit inside the TV, the height of the Crop must be scaled to match the height of the TV. But then the Crop isn't wide enough. What to do?

Well if you set Scale Out = Letter/Pillar Box what the Anthem does is pad out the short dimension with either a letter or pillar box bar -- whichever is appropriate. The image itself is left unchanged. So a 4:3 crop sent to a 16:9 TV with Scale Out = Letter/Pillar Box means that the Anthem will generate pillar box bars on either side an the 4:3 image will be embedded in the middle of the screen.

But if you set Scale Out = Anamorphic then the Anthem will STRETCH the short dimension of the Cropped image (uniformly across the length of that dimension) so that it just fits!

If you send a 4:3 cropped image to a 16:9 TV with Scale Out = Anamorphic, then the height of the image will just match the TV (no vertical distortion) and the width of the image will be stretched left to right uniformly to ALSO just match the width of the TV. Thus the image is distorted (uniformly). Circles look like wide ovals and the shape of that circle/oval is identical regardless of where it is in the image.

Another option, Scale Out = Panoramic, also stretches the Cropped input (as necessary), but concentrates the stretching more to the edges of the short dimension so that the center of the image is less distorted. Sending a 4:3 Cropped input to a 16:9 TV with Scale Out = Panoramic means the image will also just fit top to bottom and left to right (NOTE: In reality the Anthem MAY do a setting only CLOSE to an exact fit to make the stretching produce less distortion), and circles will, again, look like wide ovals, but circles near the center of the image will be closer to actually being circles and circles near the left and right sides of the image will be shown WIDER than would result from Anamorphic.

Suppose you have a 2.35:1 movie embedded in an HDTV 16:9 input frame, and you select a Custom Crop which crops down on it to just match the actual height of this "wider than wide screen" movie. If you send that Cropped input to a 16:9 TV with Scale Out = Letter/Pillar Box, the Anthem will pad out the top and bottom of the Cropped input to make it match the desired 16:9 output shape. Which means you have just put back in the very same letter box bars you just Cropped Out! (Well it is a little different as the color of the output bars will be determined by your setting in the Anthem).

But if you specify Scale Out = Anamorphic, then the Anthem will STRETCH (uniformly) the Cropped, 2.35:1, input shape to make it just fit into your 16:9 output shape. Watched on a 16:9 TV, that means the 2.35:1 movie now just fills the screen top to bottom and left to right -- at the expense of distorting the image vertically (circles look like TALL ovals this time).

You could also make the Custom Crop somewhat taller than the actual 2.35:1 of the movie, in which case Anamorphic scaling would now be a compromise -- still some letter box bars but the bars are narrower, and still some vertical distortion but the distortion is not as much since the image doesn't have to be stretched vertically as much.

Or you could feed your Custom Cropped 2.35:1 movie -- stretched Anamorphically to just fit a 16:9 output shape -- into a projector that has a Constant Image Height Anamorphic lens which optically stretches the image into a wider shape. The net result is that your 2.35:1 movie is extracted (by the Crop), stretched to just fit the 16:9 shape the projector takes as input (by Anamorphic scaling), and then optically widened by the lens so that what you see on your projection screen just fits a 2.35:1 screen. Which is a cool thing to do because it means you are not wasting output pixel resolution to the projector by simply putting black letter box pixels in there.

OK, that just leaves the "Automatic" input aspect ratio stuff.

Some sources can flag HDMI or Component video to the Anthem as being 4:3 or 16:9. Now in the case of an HDTV set top box, this is pretty straightforward since the source broadcast shapes are different. In the case of Standard DVDs however, the data coming off the disc is 720x480i REGARDLESS of whether the image represents a 4:3 shape or a 16:9 shape.

720x480i is an intermediate shape -- wider than true 4:3 and narrower than true 16:9. And what that means is that the pixels have to be interpreted as "non-square pixels" according to which type of image they represent!

Anyway the flags are supposed to tell the Anthem how to interpret the input pixels. Remember the Anthem is going to buffer that into its internal 1920x1080p image processing buffer, so any Crop you define should be thought of in terms of that buffer.

Typically what you will do is set the Crop input on HDMI Auto Detect (even if the input is connected via Component cables).

And you will set the Scale Out to Letter-Pillar box.

Then, if the auto flags are being properly sent, the Anthem will pillar box anything flagged as representing 4:3 content and will leave untouched anything flagged as representing 16:9 content (since the input shape already matches your defined output shape, presuming your output video resolution is 16:9).

If your source is NOT properly flagging things, then you can leave Crop Input on HDMI Auto Detect and manually switch Scale Out between Anamorphic and Letter-Pillar Box according to whether you are watching a 16:9 program (or a program "anamorphically enhanced" for 16:9 TVs) or a 4:3 program that you want to make sure the Anthem properly pillar boxes to preserve its original aspect ratio.

One last caveat and I'll leave it to you to go review those posts linked in the first post of this thread with the aid of the explanation here: Do NOT use Scale Out = Zoom for normal viewing. It is applied after the Scaling of the image and will result both in a lower quality image and screwing up of film cadence detection. Zoom is sometimes useful when checking out your geometry during setup. Don't use it for normal viewing.

Oh, and also, remember that you can see and alter the Crop Input and Scale Out settings using the shortcuts under the Mode key on your remote. Press and hold the Mode key until the first shortcut comes up, release, pause very briefly and press and release the Mode key again to get to the next short cut, repeat to go through all the short cuts. While any shortcut is displayed you can alter it by using the Up and Down arrows on the remote.

And now a test for the careful reader: Can you set Crop and Scale to "squish" an image?

(Think about it)

Answer: No. The Crop can never be bigger than the image and Scaling can only stretch a Crop.
--Bob

LEVESQUE,
It might help to add that last post of mine to the links in the Fun With Custom Cropping and Scaling portion of the first post.
--Bob

Awesome post Bob! You've put in one post, what should be printed in Anthem's manual. That's a much better description than what they include.

You're correct I have an anamorphic setup. I've, perhaps making my life more difficult, been trying to phrase my questions in order to avoid that detail, because I've read the "no anamorphic modes" responses already. However, that is not necessarilly a deal breaker, my IN76 doesn't have any anamorphic-specific functions either, but I can use the "4:3" scaling mode to properly display 16:9, and the Letterbox mode to properly display 2.35:1. End result is with the IN76 + a source configured for 16:9 output everything is displayed in the correct AR, despite the IN76 not having "scope support".


Thanks Bob, that's about where I was, I could see a lot of those posts involved the concepts I was seeking info on, but they were so specific, that they left a lot of the details I'm looking for up to interpretation/guessing/assumption.


So, just so I ensure that I understand perfectly clearly, 4:3 and 16:9 input crops crop 1/4 of the image off the sides or top/bottom respectively?


OK so let's pause here and make sure everybody's on board. Honestly, I think your illustrations are confusing me more than they're helping, but I believe I finally understand how these crops work:

First the Anthem makes an assumption that I have not seen stated thus far:

SD content is assumed to be 4:3 by the Anthem.
HD content is assumed to be 16:9 by the Anthem.

That is assuming the Auto HDMI setting is disabled?

As for the crops:

4:3 crop cuts the input frame down to 4:3 (no effect on a 4:3 source determined per above assumption)
16:9 crop cuts the input frame down to 16:9 (no effect on 16:9 source determined per above assumption)

Or, this is another option (but the result is not really different), with Auto HDMI disabled, does the Anthem just assume square pixels?


So to sumarize Custom Crop, the parameters are Width, Height, and Horizontal/Vertical Offset?


OK, but what happens if you've got a 4:3 source, that the provider has upconverted into 16:9 HD without pillarboxing (ie the source is stretched horizontally), how would you undo that? If I'm reading everything you've posted correctly, there's no way to fix that.

Thanks again for the response I really appreciate it.

On your last question, that is correct. Once the studio has stretched (distorted) the 4:3 content to fill a 16:9 frame the Anthem has no mechanism to undo that and return it back to a 4:3 image embedded in pillar bars.

As for the rest, I'm afraid I don't think I can do any better than what I've done. This may only make sense to you when you have a chance to sit down with an Anthem and actually use the controls to see what they do as you try the things described in my notes.

Just keep in mind that the Anthem doesn't know anything about what's inside the video input stream. It doesn't know that an HDTV channel might be broadcasting a 2.35:1 movie for example.

All the Anthem knows is the shape of the video input itself, which, for standard definition stuff, may be modified by the "anamorphic" input flags to say that the pixels should be considered fatter (representing 16:9 content) or narrower (representing 4:3 content).
--Bob

Drat, that may well be a deal breaker.


I don't know, I think I've got it now, I guess you just explain it differently than I think about it.


True, and I don't expect it to, but it seems most any other scaler/processor has the ability to "override" the output AR in one way or another, usually something as simple as "4:3" vs "16:9" that will either pillarbox or fill the screen (respectively). I'm surprised there's nothing like that on the Anthem. That's right up there with the RS-1 not doing vertical stretch on HD content.

Well except for the "squeeze" function we were just talking about, I believe the Anthem DOES do everything that you might want to do. You may have to set it to do so instead of it happening automatically, but I play around with this Cropping and Scaling stuff a lot with different sorts of content and I've yet to run into something I wanted that I couldn't make the Anthem do.

One problem with the squeeze stuff of course is that different broadcasters have different ideas about how to make fake HD "stretchovision" out of SD content. The Turner people for example like to do it in a "panoramic" fashion (non-uniform stretch). To undo that, of course, you would need to know HOW they did it non-uniformly.

Perhaps I missed it in your posts while I was away, but give a few specific examples of what you might like to do to watch certain content, and I'll tell you what I know about how to set the Anthem to do it.
--Bob

Bob,
I'm sure others are thinking this right now but I for one think this place is a whole lot better with you in it. On behalf of the 10,000 or so lurkers.......

Thank You

Peter

nine ball: Very True!

I'll add my own Q's to this discussion:

With the various scaler settings, are there remote control short cuts so that I can have one button to change the crop setting? I'm using a Harmony, and I'd love to be able to hit one button to change cropping when watching TV content.

Second related question, I know you can set up layers for each input (DVD1, DVD2, etc). Are these addressable via the remote control easily as a one-click input? (for the same reason as above)

Third unrelated question, I've noticed that when watching TV (connected via HDMI from an SA PVR) that my anthem displays the incoming video resolution correctly. But when I watch a DVD from my Toshiba (1998 vintage) dvd player via component it says "No Video Input". But when I bring up the scaler menu, it correctly says in the Info tab that the input is 720x480. Any reason why on component I don't get video information on the display? or is it because my rather old Toshiba isn't including that information in its output?

True, I'm just talking about the simple case, ie linear stretch.


Quite simply, I need to squeeze anything horizontally by 25%.

Eg 1920x1080i input squeeze to 1440x1080 and scale to 1280x720 (PJ's native res) pillarboxed. Yup, I've got a constant height setup so I need the requisite scaling. I know the Anthem can do the vertical stretch (Custom Crop + scale Anamorphic), but I need the horizontal squeeze to. I was hoping that there was a way to "trick" it into thinking HD inputs were 4:3 instead of 16:9, which would take care of that.

As best I can tell, there's no way to do that, which is unfortunate because I really like my AVM-20, and I'd like to upgrade to HDMI audio and a VXP scaler, but if it can't do that, there's no way I can justify the upgrade cost.

Thanks again for the help, I really do appreciate it.

Correct. That is the one thing you can't do that folks have asked for here.

I believe the Anthem hardware is capable of doing it, but Anthem points out, quite correctly, that adjusting the image with a "squeeze" this way discards horizontal resolution, so their recommendation is that you switch out the lens in the projector unless you are actually watching 2.35:1 content.

There have been a few other folks contact Anthem asking for such a squeeze feature to be added for their CIH setups. You might want to give Anthem a call and put in your vote as well.
--Bob

Three key sequences you can program into a remote to directly access various features can be found in Appendix A of the Manual. The overlayed inputs are all accessible this way.

Unfortunately there are no similar key sequences to get to the video processor options. The best you can do is set up overlayed inputs with, for example, one Letter Boxed and one Anamorphic, or whatever and then switch inputs.

Personally, I find accessing the shortcuts via the Mode key not that onerous. But that's obviously not as good as just having a labeled button you can add to your remote rather than having to train a viewer as to how to get to those Mode shortcuts.

The info displayed when pressing the Select key and the info displayed in the Video Source Adjust / Info panel are gathered different ways and at different times. I've seen cases with the older software that the version under Select doesn't seem to pick up on the correct state of things at the correct time. Basically it is a bug in the Anthem. The Info panel seems to be the most reliable.
--Bob

Yeah, I saw that, but I guess I was just hoping it was referring to something more refined.


While true that it does discard resolutions, there are several problems with not having it:

1) Some lenses can't be removed (VC lenses must be in place all the time)
2) You can't fix incorrectly stretched content.
3) Some people would rather have the convenience/consistency of not moving the lens.

And I'm positive the scaler is capable, the Crystallio II has specific CIH support, you can specify 2.35:1 output size and it automatically adjusts everything accordingly. And the C2 has the same Genum VXP as the Anthem. The Lumagen Radiance XD has the same thing.


Yeah, I suppose I might email them, but unless they tell me they're currently working on it, it will probably be too late and I'll need to investigate other solutions. Unfortunately HDMI is becoming necessary and the only way I can justify staying with Anthem is if I can upgrade my current 20.

Thanks again for the help.

I almost pulled the plug today and purchased a new Panasonic TH-58PZ700 plasma display. The thing that held me back is the fact that it does not support 24 Hz. I am thinking "down-the-road", however, if I am eventually to feed a 24 Hz signal into the AVM50 is there a method of reducing the judders created by outputting 60 Hz to the display using the Anthem? Is this even an issue?

You can't cheap mother nature

The only way to do away with judder is a refresh
rate that is a multiple of 24 and 60 is not one of
them.

I saw some posts from back around May or June about the failure on the HQV Film Loss Resolution test (3:2 pulldown). A firmware fix was promised by Gennum. I did a search for firmware in the thread and can't seem to find anything that looks like the problem was fixed.

Was it fixed, or does the Gennum (D2/AVM50) still fail the HQV 3:2 pulldown test?

Some people are extremely sensitive to judder, many do not notice it, and some who think they are bothered by it are actually seeing something else entirely.

For the vast majority, it is a very subtle effect. If you KNOW you see it, then you don't want to get a display that can't support 24 hz (or a multiple, like 120 hz).

OT but based on what I've seen the Pioneers are the best overall performers and they support 24p input as well.

Does the Anthem have direct IR or RS232 commands? If so, to do the squeeze, just get the Input aspect ratio to 2.35 as well as the output ratio to 2.35.

bump

Jeff, you keep popping in here every once in a while. Just go ahead and buy a D2. You know you want to!

An Excel file listing the RS-232 commands the Anthems will accept can be found as part of the Anthem Software V1.11 download available from the Anthem web site. I don't believe we've had any posts here indicating updates of that for newer Anthem software.

As of that version, I don't see anything that could be use to command a "squeeze" function from the Anthem.
--Bob

Hello all. I am new here, and if my question offends I apologize. I did not read all 300+ pages of this thread, but I did search for "firmware" and "deinterlace". I also looked on the website but can't find the date of the latest firmware nor what it fixed.

Now Now Now - it is the Holiday Season.

Behave yourself

Probably the reason no one has answered is that those who read don't know, and those who know haven't read this thread.

Posting three times in a day likely doesn't help.

Since this is a Gennum question, it might be hard to get an answer in a D2 thread. You're just as likely to get an answer in a RS-1 thread (they also use the Gennum chip).

One person who might know is Kris Deering since he's involved in testing AV equipment. I haven't seen him post here in many months.