Request Support for Games with Non-standard Aspect Ratios

[pseudonym]

Unfortunately I'm not very knowledgeable about PAL or NTSC standards, they're written in analogue electronicsese. I can't tell what they are meant to guarantee or even understand most of them.

[xstyla]

I don't either. I know that both are fixed 4:3. pal is ~720x576 @50 and ntsc is 720x480 @60 without anything more like videotext or such. I have a lil techbook for TV standards. the rest is on wikipedia.

but ntsc is making the ps2 mag scale really easy looking just scale width and leave the height intact. making 640x480 -> 720x480. correct 4:3 and the pixel ratio is uninterresting. 640x448 and 512x448 is basicly the same just bumping the height a lil. most games do set that and it ends up on 4:3 too. that's how I understand it. maybe this will also enlighten the guys asking.

[Tanuki13]

Hello again. Thank you for the replies. As I suspected, some issues are beyond my pay grade.

Judging from some replies I thought it might be a good idea to get better pictures of what I was describing so I borrowed a camera and tripod and marked the edges with post-it notes.

Maybe these can be useful for future reference. Pics 4, 5, 6, and 7 have the letterboxing. The letterboxed games are all 512x416 native.

1-Tales of the Abyss
2-Capcom Fighting Evolution
3-FFXII
4-Shining Force Neo
5-Shining Force EXA
6-FFX-2
7-FFX
8-Tales of Symphonia

















The four letterboxed games are the same aspect ratio but the two FF games are displayed higher than the two Shining Force games.

On a side note, I think I know a method that will exactly calculate the aspect ratio of these non-standard games. I will try and test it the next week or so. At the very least maybe someone who uses windowed mode can benefit from that information.

Thanks again, I appreciate any input and everyone's work on PCSX2.

[natt]

I don't either. I know that both are fixed 4:3. pal is ~720x576 @50 and ntsc is 720x480 @60

That's wrong, and not just in numbers; you're looking at the whole thing the wrong way. NTSC (and PAL for that matter) has no fixed horizontal resolution. The very nature of the signal (analog scanline based) means that while vertical resolution and temporal resolution (fields & frames) are clearly defined, the horizontal resolution is not; it's just a waveform and can go as fast or as slow as it wants. There are upper limits on how fast the signal can switch back and forth, caused by limits in bandwidth and frequency response, which comes out to approx 500-800 horizontal luma resolution and 200-300 horizontal chroma resolution. But none of that is hard and fast.

Now, when it comes to digital representations of NTSC, you choose clock rates and sync timings and you create well defined resolutions. But even there, once the signal has been modulated to NTSC, there's no easy way to recover what the original clock rates were. Looking at standards docs won't help either; it doesn't matter if studio equipment uses D1/D2/DVB/ATSC/ITU 601, because the PS2 can do whatever it pleases.

The situation is not unlike claiming that analog audio signals have sampling rates. They used to if they came from DACs, but they don't any more, and it's not easy to guess what they were with only the analog output to look at.

If you'd like a real world example, take the NES. The video resolution it uses is fully understood and documented, and worked on just about every single NTSC TV in existence. But it doesn't appear on any document from <insert standards body here>.

On a side note, I think I know a method that will exactly calculate the aspect ratio of these non-standard games. I will try and test it the next week or so. At the very least maybe someone who uses windowed mode can benefit from that information.

I'd be interested to see it. I put a method on the first page of this thread, but it's a pretty awful stab in the dark...