Hello!,

I've been playing Space Ace on Daphne from my Digital Leisure 20th Anniversary DVD conversion through DVD2Daphne 3.0... the problem I'm having is that the screen video does not fill my entire monitor, I have a vertical black bar on the right hand side of the screen about a 1/2 an inch give or take, and a very small one on the left hand side. I know this may sound as if I'm nitpicking, but I prefer to not see these black bars and have the video cover my entire screen as it does with Dragon's Lair from the same 20th Anniversary set... Is there anyway I can fix this?, as I speak I'm trying to transcode the video with Convvid2daph and reencode it to 640X480 to see if it helps, but I don't know if this is the issue. I noticed that the 'insert coin' screens and video at startup when the game is checking the roms, etc. fill the screen just fine, but as soon as the attract mode comes on, I see the bars again. Any help is appreciated, I checked the threads but didn't see anything on this. Thank You!

Update: I didn't even think of this, but I was using a DVI connection to an LCD monitor. I wasn't able to manually adjust the settings and it was automatically centering the mpegs, which were actually off a bit. I switched to an analog connection and now with a little tweaking it centers pretty good. I did notice though that in Cobra Command on Astron hardware the overlay for the helicopter in-game from the rom doesn't cover the complete screen. The Mach 3 conversion does but it's not the right color. This Cobra Command question though I believe is for the other forum.

Do these black bars show up when you play Daphne in 'windowed' mode? If so, they are part of the mpeg itself and it's not anything weird with your monitor or Daphne.

Matt,

I didn't even think to do this, thanks! It definitely is the MPEGS themselves... I went through Space Ace, Cobra Command, Dragon's Lair, and Dragon's Lair 2... the amazing thing I find is that the Original Dragon's Lair seems to be the only one of these that has perfect MPEGS that fill the entire screen area on seemingly every scene, even the "insert coin" and "game over" screens, etc... Can you or anyone confirm if the original Space Ace, Cobra Command, and DL2 laserdisc video filled the entire screen? I'm using Digital Leisures 3-disc 20th anniversary set, and an MPEG conversion of the Cobra Command Laserdisc. I no longer have a LD player to test my original Cobra Command disc to confirm. Thanks.

All those games should fill the screen. The only game I know that didn't is
Cliff Hanger, with its letterbox bars on the top and bottom




We moved the cockpit up a ways so the video lines up correctly with targets.

Hi Mark,

let me see if I can't explain this a little better.. I posted some screenshots at the website below: It's not really a letter box or pan/scan thing.. it's more of an mpeg issue where it doesn't cover the entire screen, look at them carefully... It could be how the games originally are in the first place?, but if I was to build a dedicated cabinet for one of these games besides Dragon's Lair, this would be quite noticeable. I'm thinking that maybe the Dragon's Lair mpegs are "slightly" larger than the screen, therefore you never see any size differences. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

http://home.cfl.rr.com/directory321/

As far as the Cobra Command, thanks for the explanation... I think the only real solution to that would be a dedicated Cobra Command cabinet emulation with the original roms and not a conversion, but I'm glad that the game is still playable for now.

that's how it gets ripped off the dvd. You can reencode it to fill the screen if it really bothers you that much. dvd2daph avoids re-encodes wherever possible to keep the quality level as high as it can be. The slates are included with dvd2daph, so the bars don't exist since they aren't lifted from the disc.

I'm assuming you're using a rip of the 20th anniversary Dragon's Lair dvd. It *has* to be re-encoded in order to be used with daphne, so the bars are cropped during the re-encode.

As for Cobra Command, well, I'm guessing you had your settings wrong when you captured your laserdisc.

I am curious about insert coin .... I do not have that on my screen when I played it. I do not see any insert coin anywhere. Can you show me a picture if I misunderstood you or something. I think this mpeg is from an original game I am not sure. Thanks in advance.

One thing to keep in mind is that when analog video is mastered there is an area around the boarder called the 'overscan' which is usually lost when played back on a regular tv, since it's outside the viewable screen. A computer monitor is adjustable so all the picture is inside the viewable area.

Since this area wasn't to be seen imperfections are almost always in this area. The way around it is to crop the overscan video when you are transcoding the mpeg2 for Daphne like Chip said.

Even on DVDs there can be garbage in the overscan. Usually it's from when a studio just grabs an old analog master for the DVD.

Interesting stuff guys, thanks...
With that said, It would seem to make sense if I apply an arcade monitor bezel over a genuine arcade monitor, it might actually crop the picture 'just' enough so that these imperfections might not be noticeable.

Interesting stuff guys, thanks...
With that said, It would seem to make sense if I apply an arcade monitor bezel over a genuine arcade monitor, it might actually crop the picture 'just' enough so that these imperfections might not be noticeable.

Can you help me out with that answer, please ?

Hi Rockman,

Chip's message above mine said that these screens are referred to as 'slates' that are included with DVD2Daph. I'm using the 20th anniv. dvd set and ripped it with DVD2Daph, so if you use both of these programs to play Dragon's Lair, you'll have the screens you need. I saw your other post about Dragon's Lair 2, where the "insert coin" message is not showing, this is different as it's a flashing text.... another member said in his message that this will be added to the new Daphne version that comes out in the future.

Yeah, I noticed in other message about it. Thank you.

I would re-encode the video to get rid of the black bars. But that comes with the cost of loss of quality and time...

your absolutely right. I tried it with a scene.. It would take a LONG time, and the quality, even though it still looks good... seems slightly magnified and therefore you see more imperfections. The original disc and a laser disc player are looking better and better these days... who said LD's were dead?

Of course, if you capture your own disc and have it in huffyuv format, then these little edits don't cost you any meaningful amount of quality

Is that what you are talking about ??

I think that's exactly what he's talking about.

Yes, that's definitely it!... This may be a rant or something for the wishlist, but how cool would it be for an "LD2Daph" program to exist so one could transfer their original discs automatically as flawless as possible without all the technical issues, Or just maybe DVD2Daph could include an option to rip it from the DVD 'cropped for fullscreen' with only a single re-encode? hhhmmm.... by darn, as you could see not all of us are programmers, but we are huge fans nevertheless.

LOL! I knew it. Why worry about it ? As long as it is playable and the quality is great..you should appreciate that and do not worry about this black bar things..it is not so bad.

don't worry guys... something very *big* is coming soon that's going to make all this talk obsolete.

Can't wait to see what you guys got up your sleeves!!

Me too me too!

It's not something we're doing. It's not daphne team related, which is why I can't spill the beans. But, it is something that will interest daphne users.

Interesting news... I ran Daphne to my standard 27" tv through the s-video port of my video card, and all of the games displayed perfectly centered with no black bars as seen on my computer!, Even Cobra Command through the Astron Belt hardware displayed the cockpit graphics perfectly centered... the Mach 3 conversion of Cobra Command actually has the issue this way as the bottom of the cockpit where the score is located is cut off and only about 75% visible.
I guess if one were to build a standup arcade with a 27" tv as the monitor, this is the way to go if you want to use Daphne with Mpegs!

Here's the news:
https://www.daphne-emu.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2093