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Knowledgebase: Beyond TV Archive
Setting custom aspect ratios and cropping in Beyond TV 3.4+ and 4.x and later
Posted by - NA - on 28 December 2005 07:52 AM

DESCRIPTION:

Instructions for defining custom aspect ratios for use in Beyond TV 3.4 and later. Beyond TV currently supports five aspect ratios (including "Auto"), but you can add as many as you like. These aspect ratios are accessible through the windowed or fullscreen interface by pressing "G." This is a moderately advanced process involving editing an XML file (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Snapstream\Beyond TV\CustomSettings.xml).

ARTICLE:

Find the section labeled "Aspect Ratio." Encapsulated within "Item" and "/Item" is the relevant information for the aspect ratio. To add a new aspect ratio, simply duplicate the structure of an existing aspect ratio and modify it thusly as as desired:


The Name value is the label as it will appear in Beyond TV. For (neatness of) display purposes in full-screen or windowed mode, adhering to a maximum of approximately 16 characters (typeface is variable-width) is recommended.



The X-Aspect value is the width ratio for the display.

The Y-Aspect value is the height ratio for the display.

Acceptable values for both X and Y are positive integers and "Stretch" (see example above). If "Stretch" is used in either, it will be interpreted by Beyond TV as being set on both the X and Y value.

EXAMPLE: X-Aspect 16, Y-Aspect 9 will set the aspect ratio to 16:9.



The Crop values enable you to trim the edges from the viewable area. These values represent a percentage of the total screen cropped from a given side (Top, Bottom, Left, or Right) before being stretched as necessary to adhere to the previously defined X- and Y- aspects.

Acceptable values for the Crop values are positive integers not to exceed 49.

EXAMPLE: Crop-top 10, Crop-Bottom 5 will trim 10% of the total pixels from the top, 5% of the total pixels from the bottom, and expand the remaining 85% as specified by the X- and Y- aspects.

Additional step, for Beyond TV 3.6 and later: After saving CustomSettings.xml, open the language file corresponding to the language Beyond TV uses (e.g. English.XML) in a text editor. The language files exist in the "Language" subdirectory of the Beyond TV install (by default, "\program files\snapstream media\beyond tv 3\language" for Beyond TV 3.x, and "\program files\snapstream media\beyond tv\language" for Beyond TV 4.x).

Once you've opened the file, insert a tag (from <Property> to </Property>, as formatted in this XML file) with "Name" set to the "NameID" value of the aspect ratio just inserted in CustomSettings.xml, and with "Value" set to the "Name" value of the aspect ratio just inserted in CustomSettings.xml. Failure to take this step will result in the new custom aspect ratio appearing without text in Beyond TV. Save the language file under its original filename, and restart Beyond TV.
SnapStream Media, Inc.