badly mastered DVD? resize?

[Shandra]

Mh... I guess now I know why it is a good option that the user can decide between ITU & Non-Itu Resize in GK/AGK...

I've just encountered my first 4:3 PAL DVD where there were no 2*8/2*9 black borders that defined the 702/4 Frame but filled the full 720x576 :sigh:

So I am now puzzled a bit - my assumption would be that even this picture is thought of to be expanded to 768, wouldn't that imply that this DVD will be played back with a slight AR-Error on Standalones, or is it more likely that it is still manufactured properly and, even if not ITU complient, the genereic PAR of 45/48 is DVD spec. complient ???

Does anyone has anymore experience with such DVDs? And if yes, what are your decisions in such a case if you resize?

Thanks,
SHAnDRA

[manono]

Hi-

No AR Error on DVD playback. You'll just lose some video to the TV's overscan since there are no black bars to the left and right sides. Academy Ratio is 1.37:1 anyway, so this kind of DVD is probably more accurate, with less cropping of the original film. When making an .avi from such DVDs. I'll generally make them something like 528x384, and either not crop at all, or crop a couple of pixels from the bottom to get lower AR Error, rather than the usual 512x384, cropping a total of 16 pixels from the left and right sides.

This kind of DVD (4:3 fullscreen with no black bars) is becoming fairly common now, at least in R1 NTSC. I keep the ITU box checked.

[Shandra]

So no need for me to modify my process - thanks for the explanation ;) At first this really "scared" me somehow, but if they are becoming fairly common among ntsc discs I'll bet its just a matter of time until I encounter the next one.
BTW. is it common practice to label the AR on the back-cover information as Fullscreen and not 4:3 (wich added to my confusion but had forgotten to include as info) ?

[manono]

Hi-

I was just checking some of my fullscreen DVDs. Some say "Standard Version presented in a format preserving the aspect ratio of its original theatrical presentation". Some say 4:3 and some don't say anything at all. I don't have any that say fullscreen. I have seen quite a few in the stores that say fullscreen when there's also a widescreen version available.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Shandra,

Can you play, capture and upload an still image from the DVD please? Preferably from a nice light section, where you can see the edges of the black mattes.

Please don't try to resize the image as it's important we see it in it's true 'anamorphic' form!

To upload the image, you could use ImageShack (http://www.imageshack.us/).


Cheers

[Shandra]

Ok, the pics are uploaded (well, before one isn't sufficient I've decided on 3).

I've used just two lines as avs skript (loadplugin -> dgdecode & mpeg2source) and saved the images via vdub.

You may notice the black bar that is topleft & only ~halve(--) the image width.

http://img20.exs.cx/img20/8020/NRH0.jpg

http://img20.exs.cx/img20/3465/NRH1.jpg

http://img20.exs.cx/img20/2029/NRH2.jpg

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks Shandra,

Your uploaded images provide a perfect example of up-to-date standard 'full framed' PAL 720x576 4:3 image.

As far as I can see there's only a slight defect in the top and bottom row of pixels.

May I ask, will you be intending to play and view your finished encode via an DVD/Mpeg4 stand-alone player and a TV. Or will you be watching it on an PC?

As manono has already mentioned, such 4:3 transfers are quite popular in Northern America and are still regularly manufactured. I have some of these NTSC DVD's over here in the UK, many of which contain some form of vertical boarders - at around the 702/704 pixel mark.

NTSC 4:3 DVD's are easy to convert to an 'square pixel' Mpeg4 encode because they only occupy an 640x480 pixel frame size. And as a result, when burned onto an CD~R or DVD~R/RW, will spin quite happily in an stand-alone player.

However, we Euroland people are not so lucky and as you already probably know, PAL 4:3 DVD's don't convert so easily to an Mpeg4 file that can be spun on an stand-alone player.... We have to re-size!

If you are intending to view your encodes on an PC you can either resize to 768x576 (exact 4:3 but contains too many pixels for playback on an stand-alone player). Or you could consider generating an encode with PAR signalling. XviD has various PAR settings, they even have one for 4:3 PAL. However I would recommend you use an 'custom' PAR setting of 16:15.

Now in order to view your PAR encodes correctly on an PC, you will need an Mpeg4 DSdec decoder filter that can detect AR signalling. The XviD guys are working on such an decoder but if you can't wait you can install minolta's test version (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=79350[/url).

You may also be interested to know that there are a few stand-alone players that can detect AR signalling too now!


Cheers

[Shandra]

Of course you may ask ;)
As its only a few days I've started on "experiencing/test" the mp4 container and my standalone can playback divx, but isn't truly certified for it (the infamous medion 7457). So I am mostly using it with vanilla DVDs only (and just sometimes with encodes) and together with my trials at mp4 & mkv I've started to give xvid a try, so my standalone experience on encodes (xvid, or mp4 container in general) may become a reality next year (I am still waiting for one player that utilizes some of the so far (AFAIK) unsupported features (standalones) of mp4 (or at least mkv support)), until then I most of the time use the PC and my 19" Display with my encoded Backup.
Well, for the resize I think I will try out the display flag in mkv (for my previous test & first anamorphic encode it worked pretty well)for it. Mh, PAR Setting in XVid, well good hint - thats a try for the mp4 container experiments :D, apart from that I think I have the time to wait for the xvid-guys DS Filter (*1) you mentioned :D

And for the standalone - basic features only xvid encode was already on the todo list (together with some DivX5.2 tests), but so far I haven't even had the time to see if it will recognize .mp4 files, just played AVIs (ITU resized) so far on it (and somehow I doubt it will read the PAR Flag of the m4v stream - but that remains to be seen).

(*) And that reminds me to set "may - in future times the setting of PAR in the m4v stream conflict with mkv display flag" on my knowledge hunt list ;)

[SeeMoreDigital]

When it comes to stand-alone players, only a few can spin Mpeg4 streams within an .MP4 container.

Currently the ESS chip-set based Philips DVP 642 (North America) and DVP 630 (European) are confirmed to work, however other ESS chip-set based player may do also!

One thing to note though. None of the ESS chip-set based players can decode AAC audio streams, only Mp3. Nor can they decode video streams DAR signalling, only PAR.

When it comes to MKV support, personally I find it very unlikely that this container will ever reach stand-alone players, which despite my preference for the .MP4 container, is pretty sad.

Happily, I can confirm that the MKV container will work perfectly with XviD Mpeg4 PAR streams (using the proposed new XviD DSdec decoder filter). When conducting my tests I used AVI-mux to combine XviD/AAC, XviD/Mp3, XviD/AC3, XviD/WAV... with no problems at all.


Cheers

[Shandra]

:sigh: yeah, I can understand your love for the MP4 container ;)
And as you said - AAC standalones - nogo sofar (maybe a few exceptions I am not aware of)...
And yes... mkv maybe a deadend if its corporate as vorbis was for audio in such terms :'(
But for me the main reason to stick to mkv vs. mp4 on pc basis is that the same encode in mkv plays smooth on my pc, whereas I now noticed that in mp4 (so far I only tried the Osmo4 player & haven't installed the 3ivx DS Filter - my only playback experience apart from my PC is a friends Mac I use for testing so far on .mp4) my PC is reaching its limits.... somehow its the same as with the thread topics source I encoded as a trial in upsize to 768x576 and source 720x576.... (just for test - I will never ever again do a upsize encode) -> whereas on my 2 main PC both encodes played smooth and in-audio-synch (AAC (FAac (-q100 in this case))) my girl-friends PC (Duron 1,9 vs. my primary PC XP21+ (I still call it primary as its my -for work-pc -my VHS&TV capture PC is a PIV2.6)) was unable to keep the synch on the upsized encode but played back smoothly the 720 encode.... Aeh, back on sentence: its the same comparison for me on mp4 vs. mkv on my machine with the programms I tried (mp4box so far, mp4creator remains to be seen) -> mkv smooth, mp4 is edge of limit (out of synch/frame skip in fast action scenes [in regards to xvid, QPel, GMC, MPeg Matrix,BFrames=3, Edit: And no packed stream, so mp4creator may be no problem (at least with xvid)]))

But yes, I may follow your love for mp4 if the programms/apps dev. advances, or I simply do a hardware upgrade.... so far I hope that sticking to mkv (wich is my current step away from avi) with xvid/divx & aac may easily be converted to true mp4 in future times (and with advanced tools) :D

For me its experimenting, but step by step.... and as I am now leaving MP3 (wich is still mp4 spec, or am I wrong?) to AAC and switching from AVI to MKV.... sadly the next time I can spare on experiments and decision is 1/2 year ahead (next pause at the university) and therefore I hope that my current decision may not be that wrong after all ;)

P.S.: May I hope to call back on you next year or so, when I have the money and time again to decide on a new standalone? [its really frustrating to keep oneself up-to-date with 4 PCs at home and still be open for new developments when "buisseness/studies" topics are of a totally different topic :'( ....] ?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Shandra
P.S.: May I hope to call back on you next year or so, when I have the money and time again to decide on a new standalone? [its really frustrating to keep oneself up-to-date with 4 PCs at home and still be open for new developments when "buisseness/studies" topics are of a totally different topic :'( ....] ? Sure you can... if we are all still here :)


Cheers