problems getting movie to play at real resolution

[nate klefsas]

HI, I made a movie, Vanilla sky to be exact, and it's been giving me a headach for the last few days. the problem I am having is getting the divx file that I made to play at its real resolution in media player. I have gotten it to play at the right resolution in zoomplayer, all i did was select custom in the aspect ratio tab. but when I open it up in media player the resolution is set at a much higher one then it actually is at and makes the picture distorted and blurry/fuzzy/ bigger then it should be, doesent look good in my opinion. I made a movie useing the italian job this morning and the resolution is perfect, plays perfectly in my media player. I would just play the file with zoomplayer on my computer, but the problem is that I want to play it in my xbmp, x box media player, and it does the same thing as mediaplayer for the computer does. could it be the movie, or am I missing something, could I have not done something right,has this happened to anyone else, any ideas, cause I'm giving up on the movie, I've reincoded it to many times and am now moving on.any feed back would be nice.

[JensG.]

According to this thread http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68099 you did not understand which resolution is correct for a given film.
Why don't you just follow the excellent guide written by doom9?

[nate klefsas]

I understand how to do everything correctly, I just made sphere perfectly over last night, no problems at all, looks like it should. It's just that I was having problems making vanilla sky, for some reason it wont play at its right resolution in media player, sphere will, so why wont vanilla sky, that last post I made I was still trying to find out what was going on, I haddent tryed making another movie yet. I've had g knot since this summer and am very familar with it. I know that the best resolution is based on the percentage given to you after doing a compressability test, you determine the quality percentage by moving the slider bar which selects your resolution, no mater what resolution I select for vanilla sky, it willalways be the same size on the screen in media player. So to compensate I made one with a resolution that would force it to place the black bars where they should be by ofsetting the resolution by alot, 720x320.I figured that mediaplayer couldent zoom in on the movie if the window had to stay open to a 720 resolution, thus showing the width resolution somewhat correctly, It will be the right width then. I just dont have the video vocabulary to explain it word for word, sory, I can just explain it in lamemans terms. I just know that it doesent show as the proper size when I play it in media player. zoom player plays it correctly when i select custom aspect ratio, why wont media player? I will figure it out for my self, I'm gonna make it one more time from scratch, maybe it was something i did with dvd decripter, and if that doesent work then I will try autogk for it to see if that makes a difference.

[JensG.]

Perhaps you just did not set the correct mark at 16:9 or 4:3.

[nate klefsas]

now that is a possibility. I'll try making it as a 4:3 movie, the vts stream info said it was a 16:9 movie, but I'll try 4:3. could it possible be something to do with dvd 2 avi? I'm gonna try save project instead of save project(1.67) thats the only thing I did different then all the other movies.

[JensG.]

You should always check the resolution in the preview window when it comes to compressibility test!

[jggimi]

There are two different places to check for Display Aspect Ratio (DAR). They will be either 16:9 or 4:3, and they are sometimes different. The IFO file The MPEG-2 video streamDVD2AVI uses the MPEG-2 stream embedded in the VOB set. When GKnot opens the .d2v, it sets the DAR to 16:9 or 4:3, depending on what DVD2AVI put into the project file.

Standalone DVD players use the IFO file. Whenever the DARs are different, the IFO file is correct. We all seem to buy the occasional DVD with the wrong DAR setting in the video, and we need to manually switch it in Gknot. I can only guess that it's sloppiness on the part of the authoring technician.

The content's aspect ratio is independant of the DAR. I have a 5-movie set of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals. All were shot widescreen, and two of them were shot in an extreme widescreen format (2.5:1, if I remember correctly). Yet all five have 4:3 DARs. This means they have a lot more letterboxing, and less content, in the video stream than there would be at 16:9.

There are thee places to check the content's AR: 1) the dvd packaging, 2) the publisher's website, or 3) imdb.com.