Next stupid question

[Darrell]

This is a unique problem to me, maybe someone can help. I am ripping Independence Day. DVD2AVI shows it as a 4:3 movie(640/480)...yet my server file from DVD2AVI is 720/480. How does this relate to Gknot?...(I'm getting there)..When I open it in Gknot ,it opens as NTSC- 720/480. To get the correct resolution, I have to choose 16:9. After my cropping is done, I resize to the largest file size(800/340)..no problem..the resolution is right(2.35) and all is right with the world. BUT...(here it comes) The resolution of the d2v file was never right to begin with. The AVS file shows a cropped resolution of 708/368..the DVD is really 640/480, so the cropped resolution should be 628/368....when I change from NTSC to "other 640/480"...my resolution is thrown off and is changed to 800/384....Well, that was okay too...I experiment alot anyway. So I saved the avs file at that resolution too. When I opened the AVS file, it still shows as 708/368 and not as 628/368. I edited the AVS to reflect the 628/368 and all of a sudden my 800/384 resolution is now correct! How in the WORLD do I open my stats file in GKNOT after I have done a first pass using this little edited but vastly different AVS file? Can I open it under NTSC-720/480? the resolution will be right but the stats file will be according to a 800/384 1rst pass and not 800/340 pass. Do I go to OTHER 640/480 and face a similar but reversed problem?
Or should I just say to hell with it, change my name to Biff,move to Wisconson & raise cattle?

[hakko504]

First, this is not a stupid question, even though Doom9 (http://www.doom9.org) does a quite good job of explaining it in his guides (http://www.doom9.org/guides.htm) it is quite hard to understand it.

Thing is, DVD's DOES NOT HAVE SQUARE PIXELS! Therefor all DVD's have the image stored as 720x480, no matter if the DVD is 4:# or 16:9. These values have been chosen so it would be easy to resize the picture for display on TV.
In order to view it on a computer display, which does have square pixels, it is resized, usually to 640x480 (4:3) or 852x480 (16:9).

So you should NOT manually change the size to 640x480, this will be wrong. On the other hand, why does GK set the crop values to 708x368? It probably recognises the stream as 720x480 and when you uses the automatic crop values it selects the correct crop settings. Whether you should choose 4:3 or 16:9 setting depends on the movie. Try playing the DVD in a window and look at it. (Remember that not all DVD players will diplay the stream correctly when playing vobs from HD.)

Good Luck

[Doom9]

I happen to have that movie. As probably written elsewhere on my page (I doubt that anybody truly comprehends the sheer volume of info there but me)... the DAR flags in the MPEG-2 streams do not necessarily have to correspond to the real DAR of the movie that is stored in the IFO. The DAR in the IFO should be the correct one and as the example of ID4 (but also other movies show), the player takes the IFO DAR to scale your picture. ID4 is clearly a 16:9 movie, so it's only normal that you have to set the DAR to 16:9 even though DVD2AVI shows 4:3 (it shows the DAR of the MPEG-2 stream).