Bug: PAL Videos are squished vertically

[Slayerr88]

PAL 4:3 videos appear vertically squished when played in Alpha Player, despite being correctly formatted content for a 4:3 CRT display - both - remux and rip. The video image is vertically compressed, causing characters and objects to appear unnaturally short.

Since my TV is PAL which can also play NTSC flawlessly, 4:3 PAL videos should display with correct aspect ratio, with no stretching or compression.

EDIT:
I just checked the geometry using the Dreamcast version of 240p Suite. I switched the emulator settings to PAL region, and the grid pattern is also squished. Something is definitely off for the interlaced signal.

Setup:

• Raspberry Pi 5
• ReplayOS
• NFS
• Official Adapter

[rtomasa]

Check the video codec information. It was probably encoded incorrectly at 480p/25fps or something similar, which would explain the black bars. PAL resolutions are typically 288p or 576i at 25fps, while NTSC is usually 240p or 480i at ~24/30fps.

Also, using the Dreamcast 240p Test Suite is not ideal for this case, since the Dreamcast cannot display all vertical lines correctly in 50Hz mode. This limitation is even mentioned in the 240p Test Suite documentation/help section.

[Slayerr88]

At first I also thought that, but then I checked it with the Sega Mega Drive version of the 240p suite, with enabled 480i. I’m aware of the PAL letterboxing, but this is too much. Even on console emulators it looks almost like widescreen. It wasn’t like this in the previous version.
Only 480i is affected, 240p PAL is okay.

[rtomasa]

The timing and overscans were always the same in every version, and they look exactly as expected. Moreover, RePlay displays smaller black bars than real hardware in PAL modes.

You can clearly see it when comparing RePlay against Mister, both configured in PAL and using the same version of 240p test suite with 480i enabled (same results when compared to real hardware).
https://youtu.be/tuWc5pUl0oI

[Slayerr88]

This is very strange. I was watching the same PAL TV series on both the PS3 and ReplayOS, both connected through SCART, and then this happened. Could it be an issue with the RGB-Pi 2?

I just compared it with my PS3: NTSC looks the same, but PAL has a noticeably narrower image on ReplayOS. I also have a PAL PS2, and the letterbox bars are nowhere near this large on my TV (I just tested it with the PAL version of Shadow of the Colossus, switching between 60Hz and 50Hz).

EDIT: I selected 50Hz in the options, and even the ReplayOS menu itself becomes narrowed like this :(

Screens:
PS3 (previous ReplayOS was like this)

ReplayOS (current version)

[rtomasa]

Provide the video codec information of the video. Use VLC for getting the same.

[Slayerr88]

Every PAL video looks like that.
Since the ReplayOS menu in 50Hz also looks similar, I think it’s some kind of transcoding issue, not Alpha Player

[rtomasa]

also provide screenshots from SYSTEM > VIDEO (first page) and SYSTEM > INFORMATION after loading any of the above videos.

[Slayerr88]

Video file displayed in ReplayOS set to Auto, 60Hz, or 50Hz

Squished menu UI when no video is loaded:

[ruizscar]

@rtomasa I am testing a new pi5 setup for a friend, and seeing that, after updating to 1.7.0 some videos are playing compressed just like #319

But unlike in #319 I can't fix it by loading a 240p game first.

You can test the same video as in #319

[rtomasa]

OK I found the root cause. There was a path on the video player resolution detection making some PAL videos to still generate a timing of 480 instead of 576. Now it is resolved.