Questions about options on preview after saving .avs file in megui.

[dp88]

I've been ripping movies for awhile. I rip them animorphically and crop out black bars. It works fine, I have a few questions. When I create an avs file, and click the save button, a new preview window pops up and it has options. What do these do? Should I leave the aspect ratio where it is? When I rip widescreen dvd's of tv shows, don't crop and play it back on xbmc, I still get small black bars on the top and bottom of my videos (screen is 16:9). Should I be changing the aspect ratio on this second preview screen? I also see buttons marked "intro" and "credits". I get that I am supposed to mark the end of the intro and the beginning of the credits, but what does this do?

Sorry for the newbie questions. This is confusing me.

[Inspector.Gadget]

None of those buttons modify the AVS. All they do is seek and apply PAR to the current image to show you what the final product looks like when properly displayed. Not all widescreen DVDs are 16:9; they are all encoded, obviously, at 720x480 with the appropriate PAR, but besides that some are encoded to take up the full widescreen frame and others are not. Black borders on 16:9 displays are inevitable when watching content that isn't 16:9. No big deal.

Intro and credits can be used, I believe, to specify the appropriate frame for applying different compression (to bit-starve low-complexity credits for the benefit of high-motion scenes, for instance). I've never had occasion to do this, so I don't know how/how well it works.

[dp88]

None of those buttons modify the AVS. All they do is seek and apply PAR to the current image to show you what the final product looks like when properly displayed. Not all widescreen DVDs are 16:9; they are all encoded, obviously, at 720x480 with the appropriate PAR, but besides that some are encoded to take up the full widescreen frame and others are not. Black borders on 16:9 displays are inevitable when watching content that isn't 16:9. No big deal.

Intro and credits can be used, I believe, to specify the appropriate frame for applying different compression (to bit-starve low-complexity credits for the benefit of high-motion scenes, for instance). I've never had occasion to do this, so I don't know how/how well it works.

Thanks for your response. The problem though is that I am getting black bars on HBO shows that were most definitely shot in 16:9. I have checked xbmc's video calibration and it is perfect. Also, I discovered that those aspect ratio settings in that preview screen do affect the final output of the encoding process.

[Inspector.Gadget]

Also, I discovered that those aspect ratio settings in that preview screen do affect the final output of the encoding process.

No, they don't. If you don't use anamorphic encoding in the AVS Script Creator, your DAR in NTSC-land will be 1.5 minus cropping. If you do, the PAR will be applied to get you the correct post-cropping DAR using non-square pixels in the renderer. Those post-save settings don't affect the anamorphic info stored in the AVS script as comments passed to MeGUI's bundled encoders at the bitstream and/or container level.