Aspect ratios... thoughts and inputs?

[sharza]

Hi

I'm not exactly new to backing up dvd's etc. However nowadays with blurays and hdtv im absolutely newbie. With the blurays always coming in the aspect that the director wanted (mostly bringing letterboxing to even the largest widescreen tv), I've found myself in some dilemmas and some major challenges.

I've been reading around about aspect ratios for the best of my abilities, and I am terribly sorry if some of the answers to my questions already exists in these forums... I have searched thoroughly to no avail. (and yup - it may very well be me searching for the wrong terms).

My main goal is to get rid of letterboxing. I've been experimenting with meGUI to recode the video using the AVS script creator to crop black bars, but then again - that brings another issue in play - everything will naturally look tallish when only the height is being cropped. So what to do???

I did actually manage to get the picture I wanted, by simply cropping the width of the video - as I will rather loose some width to get a natural picture where the aspect is acceptable to me. That however ended up being a strange resolution, and is probably not the "right" way to do this. I've seen display aspect ratios, video aspect ratios, playback aspect ratios and must admit - I'm totally and utterly confused with regards to how to control those things.

I know that video quality and rights and wrongs are mainly very subjective matters, with regards to the individuals preferences.

I still looks for some input to some thoughts. What would you guys suggest from below possibilities given the pros and cons.

I am using meGUI encoding with x264

First - I do not - never - burn to bluray... it is always the other way round, ripping my bluray to disk, and then converting to MKV's for playback either through the pc or my popcornhour.

Second - I am not attempting to save disk space, that is not my mission - I have plenty of that and will add more as needed, so what I want is full picture quality.

I can do one of the following:

1.
Keep everything original, and apply approx 133% zoom to the source in either popcornhour player og mpc-hc player. That would crop the video as preferred. I do however notice in very high bandwidth videos at times I see stutter and lags when playing back from even the highest performance raidset I have.

2.
Re-encode - cropping only the black bars, and then apply cropping zoom in either popcornhour or mpc-hc. I have seen no issues with this, but the source is with everything tallish and as I see it, alot of wasted space because somewhere between 200-250 pixels in each side will never be used but still takes up space.

3.
Re-encode - cropping both black bars and 200-250 from each side, ending up with a strange resolution, e.g. 1500 x 800. I have seen no issues with this either, but I would still like to keep my videos in an accepted format/resolution, and it seems to me that they are not really if cropped like that. This solution would play back out of the box in the correct aspect and full-screen because its already cropped correctly. So if ever being played back on a player lacking the zoom/crop capabilities they would still have an acceptable aspect ratio.

4.
Do something completely different - I have no clue to what however, except if it was possible in the video to set a display aspect ratio, so the the player would just apply that and correctly adjust/crop the video even though the resolution is in another AR - I have not yet found anything that suggested this tho. Any inputs are extremely appreciated.


So - the question really is, am I completely and utterly way off here, or do I actually attempted something usable here?

Any pointers and suggestions would be very appreciated.

At the time im still reading about x264, avisynth, aspect ratios and lots more, and is still just as confused :)

Sorry if some of this is hard to understand, english is not my native language.

I say thanks alot in advance, to anyone taking their time to respond to this.

- Sharza

[Lyris]

The only way to properly watch ~2.35:1 ratio films without letterboxing is to buy a 2.35:1 ratio screen, a projector, and an anamorphic lens. These setups aren't cheap (I have a high-end projector myself but still use it with a 16:9 screen).

Sorry to question a question, but are the black bars really worth all this trouble? Letterboxing isn't great, but there's no better solution (other than the above).

[manono]

Any pointers and suggestions would be very appreciated.
Leave it alone and learn to ignore the black bars.

I really don't think you'll get much sympathy here at Doom9. Here we pretty much watch our films in OAR (Original Aspect Ratio) as God and the director intended. Just remember back to the days of your old 4:3 CRT TV when you watched 2.35:1 movies on DVD with much bigger black bars.

Or buy yourself a Philips Cinema 21:9 set:

http://www.consumer.philips.com/c/televisions/33092/cat/gb/?tab=cinema+21:9

[Lyris]

^ No, don't, I reviewed one :) It's not worth the cash. Sharp ASV panel with weird pixel layout, off gamma tracking, lousy contrast, and smeary blacks.

If someone were to make a 21:9 PDP, though...

[sharza]

Leave it alone and learn to ignore the black bars.

I really don't think you'll get much sympathy here at Doom9. Here we pretty much watch our films in OAR (Original Aspect Ratio) as God and the director intended. Just remember back to the days of your old 4:3 CRT TV when you watched 2.35:1 movies on DVD with much bigger black bars.

Or buy yourself a Philips Cinema 21:9 set:

http://www.consumer.philips.com/c/televisions/33092/cat/gb/?tab=cinema+21:9
But back then, most dvd's came in a full screen version, where resizing had been done to eliminate black bars...

I really do mind those bars... projectors and 21:9 screen is not really an option for me as I have the setup that I feel fits me well. (besides Im outta space - will be hard to fit anything bigger than the 50" thats already hanging there :) ).

Now I am not looking for sympathy... everybody does as they see best fit - thats the way its always been and prolly always will be... I am looking for some thoughts about different solutions and approaches to accomplish what I want... some possibilities I already have and some I dont... Maybe I'll stick with simply keeping the movies original, and apply zoom when I'm the one watching, that way both OAR and cropped full screen will be possible...

Then again it wont really be an issue... should anyone figure they wanted to watch it OAR, they could just use the bd disc instead of the mkv.

[manono]

But back then, most dvd's came in a full screen version, where resizing had been done to eliminate black bars...
Yeah, but no one with any sense bought Pan And Scan DVDs. And those that did are regretting it now that they have a widescreen TV set and are watching them with pillarbars.

If you insist on butchering the movies, just use the remote control on the TV set to zoom them in and eliminate the black bars.

[sharza]

Yeah, but no one with any sense bought Pan And Scan DVDs. And those that did are regretting it now that they have a widescreen TV set and are watching them with pillarbars.

If you insist on butchering the movies, just use the remote control on the TV set to zoom them in and eliminate the black bars.

Well that'll leave me without any sense then. I do not regret and do not watch any of it anyway. I do not watch any of my DVD's anymore, except for live music dvd's - I dont really feel the quality is good enough when watching on 50"... 42" was ok, but doesn't quite make it on the 50".

I dont see how I butcher the movie really by filling the screen and remove what's annoying me most of all, but thats not in scope of the initial questions.

I say thanks for the inputs so far, and will most likely stick to zooming as it will make everything so much simpler.