[ANSWERED] Confused about scaling video clips - video mixer

[JJHP3]

Hi All - the same patch I sent last week about crossfading is enclosed. I solved the transition problem, but now I am confused about scaling different resolution clips. In SETTINGS, I have default 1920, scale to smallest. My video bins contain several different sizes, some SD 800x600, some HD 1920x1080. I am using a video mixer to combine. The mixer output would frequently not scale correctly. Projector actor set to aspect OFF then output to my HD monitor. Changing the mixer's scaling settings didn't work. The only way I could think to solve this was to send the video through a scaler actor (set for 1080 x 720 for example) ahead of the video mixer. This works most of the time, but again, not always. What do I need to do? Thanks again for the Forum's helpful feedback!  - John

resolution-for-forum.izz

[DillTheKraut]

@jjhp3

The 'default' value 1920 you set, is used only when you set 'When combining..." to 'scale to default...'. Otherwise the other settings (smalest/largest image) will be used and your custom settings ignored. As I understand, if you set the mixers scaler settings to 'prefs', it still does 'scale to smallest' as you set the main preferences to this.

[JJHP3]

@dillthekraut Thanks for replying. I think I understand the settings preference meaning. My confusion comes from the, maybe erroneously, assumption that the video mixer actor will scale clips according to the settings preference. That does not seem to the case. When I mix an SD clip with an HD clip rarely do they combine into the "larger to smallest" preference. In fact, sometimes the HD clip fills the horizontal space, but is squished vertically quite out of aspect. Looking at my patch, one can see I tried to solved this issue by putting a scaler actor (set for 1280x720) in front of the mixer actor. This helped. But on occasion the output is still incorrect - mostly one layer fits the monitor while the other layer is slightly more narrow.

[DillTheKraut]

@jjhp3

I don't have the possibilities to try it extensively right now, but some quick tests showed the expected behavior regarding the preset and actors mode.

Please accept my apology, if this is obvious. But I'd like to try it anyway. My guess is, your issue results from the different aspects of the content (1920x1080 = 16:9, 800x600 = 4:3, 1080x720 = 3:2). If you mix two different aspects, the unpreferred video is forced into the aspect of the preferred videos aspect. The difference to the scaler is, it always fills the frame (stretches the content), while the mixer might fill the frame with black (letterboxed), depending on the mode. Thats what the h / v modes are for, to decide how to handle those.

[Woland]

@jjhp3

Maybe this file will help a bit to understand how scaling works: scaling-example-2024-02-05-3.2.6.izz

[DillTheKraut]

@dillthekraut

There is one more value which is important to this. The projector actors 'keep aspect' value. It is set to off in your patch!

[JJHP3]

@woland Amazing resource! Thanks SO much...  - John