Why do some 16x9 Films Rip as 4x3??

[bradesp]

I've spent most of my Christmas vacation archiving my dvd collection to a media server using ripit4me with Decrypter and FixVTS. I'm up to 150 movies and counting, but have stumbled on several movies that say they are 16x9 but the ripping software says they are 4x3, what gives? BTW some say "with black bars" so those I understand, but others appear to be anamorphic, yet they also rip as 4x3...

I notice that when I play these back (using Media Player Classic) the window that my MPC displays is indeed 4x3 but the image of the actual movie inside this frame is 16x9.

Can someone enlighten me? Also, once I start playing these movies back on my 16x9 HDTV, I'm concerned about formatting. How will these movies appear on my tv? WIll I be able to stretch the actual movie image to fill my 16x9 display area on my tv?

Thanks!

brad

[setarip_old]

Hi!BTW some say "with black bars"I have an extensive collection of DVDs and have never seen "with black bars" stated on any DVD label or package.

Would you be good enough to mention the Titles and Regions of the DVDs that have this stated?

[philco]

dvds that say "with black bars" are refering to widescreen movies, i've noticed the samething on the back of the dvd covers down on the bottom of my dvds. cant remember which ones and cant check since they are in storage right now.

[blutach]

The one sure way to determine this (and I'd trust the ripper) is to open the rip in PgcEdit, go to the main movie, right click and select Domain Stream Attrributes. This will tell you if it is 16:9 or 4:4 with hard matte.

Happy New Year all.

Regards

[Devinator]

Hi!I have an extensive collection of DVDs and have never seen "with black bars" stated on any DVD label or package.

Would you be good enough to mention the Titles and Regions of the DVDs that have this stated?

I've noticed things on the back of the dvd case saying "the black bars on the top and bottom of the picture are normal..."

Places like blockbuster and walmart still carry a lot of fullscreen DVDs. :mad:

why would anyone want to pay full price and only get to watch part of the film, rather than the complete film? :mad:

[pyrates]

I've noticed things on the back of the dvd case saying "the black bars on the top and bottom of the picture are normal..."

Places like blockbuster and walmart still carry a lot of fullscreen DVDs. :mad:

why would anyone want to pay full price and only get to watch part of the film, rather than the complete film? :mad:

Because some people like the "look" of a movie filling their screen completely. They don't care that up to 2 thirds of the movie screen was removed to make it a full screen movie.

If they do get the widescreen version, they will then proceed to change the dvd player output to 16:9 to stretch the movie so that there will be as little black bars on the top and bottom as possible. They won't care that the movie will be taller and skinnier and look funny, only that their 4:3 tv screen is filled.

These people do NOT get what widescreen is all about. They want the dvd's they buy to always fill the screen no matter what format they are in. And no matter how funny it looks too. They just ignore it.

And I do know people who do all this and don't even realize the mistakes they are making. And it pisses me off to no end.:mad:

[blutach]

Well, pyrates, I guess they figure they didn't buy a TV to watch black bars :D :D :D

Regards

[HeadBangeR77]

The bars are typical for 1:2.35/2.40 films. If the film were encoded anamorphic with full vertical resolution, then the image would have to be stretched too much by playback, making the image softer (or at least I assume so). Therefore they are encoded as 16:9 anamorphic.
The basic Doom9 guide on AR isn't bad, it helped me understand basic things a couple of years ago.

Shame I can't find an English version of this guide:

http://encodingwissen.brother-john.net/video/anamorph-quelle.html

cheers,
HDBR77

EDIT: Ooops?! Some posts above have disappeared into thin air.