Inventive Software
28th January 2006, 12:41
I've been backing up DVDs for about a year now, and I've always found that people feel the need to resize the source. Bearing in mind I'm in PAL land, and don't have to worry about IVTC and all those other (complex) issues that arise with NTSC DVDs. So my point is this.
DVDs in PAL are encoded at a resolution of 720x576 at 25 FPS. Normally this would have a Display Aspect Ratio of 16:9 but on the odd occasion, it's 4:3.
Now to find out what the resolution of the source is when the Display Aspect Ratio flag has been applied, I'd multiply the height by the aspect ratio. For 16:9 movies this results in 1024x576 and for 4:3, it's 768x576.
Occasionally I may feel the need to crop the movie if there are black bars, but most of the time I leave it.
However, I don't know whether your standard issue DVD player multiplies the height by the DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) or divides the width by the DAR. If it's the width, then that gives me a resolution of 720x405 for 16:9 movies, and 720x540 for 4:3 movies.
What my ultimate question is: are DVDs limited by width or height?
DVDs in PAL are encoded at a resolution of 720x576 at 25 FPS. Normally this would have a Display Aspect Ratio of 16:9 but on the odd occasion, it's 4:3.
Now to find out what the resolution of the source is when the Display Aspect Ratio flag has been applied, I'd multiply the height by the aspect ratio. For 16:9 movies this results in 1024x576 and for 4:3, it's 768x576.
Occasionally I may feel the need to crop the movie if there are black bars, but most of the time I leave it.
However, I don't know whether your standard issue DVD player multiplies the height by the DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) or divides the width by the DAR. If it's the width, then that gives me a resolution of 720x405 for 16:9 movies, and 720x540 for 4:3 movies.
What my ultimate question is: are DVDs limited by width or height?