Handbrake: how to choose right viewing format (aspect ratio)?

[Moppelkotze]

Hello,

I read https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/AnamorphicGuide and other stuff (also some terms explained in the trac.../wiki). Because I still wasn't sure, if I did understand it and if I took the right conclusions I went through trial and error.

I use Handbrake 0.9.1 on PPC with 10.4.11. I am trying to recover a scratchy DVD, that my DVD-Player doesn't play without stuttering (my Mac still does). I do not want to risk loosing it (although DVD prices are low these days) by doing trial and error even more times. So here I come up and ask you.

My Problem: I do not know what of the following options I have to choose, if I just want to watch the Film on my TVs (4:3 CRT and 16:9 LCD) the way the director had planned it and wants it to be seen.
What options I am choosing from and not understanding (after studying wikis and Forums): a) keep aspect ratio, b) anamorphic (PAR) (there is no strict etc. as explained in the wiki) c) cropping
What I did: I choose the above options and mixed them and ended up with 6 combinations:
- anam. + crop
- anam. without crop
- aspect ratio without crop
- aspect... + crop
- without neither + crop
- without neither and without crop

Only Option 6 created a difference, when watching. The picture was squeezed from left and right, but I could see the whole picture on the left and right on my 4:3 Tube. The others were all the same, and all including trial 6 missed the outer picture "parts" from above and under (-> vertical resolution missed part of the picture, though Handbrake said it had minimized the picture there and made the horizontal larger).

Question: what for god's sake does a poor soul like mine have to do, to get the picture as it was intended by the artist?

The source is said to be "1.33:1 Aspect ratio, 4:3 Full Frame, PAL".

Thank you very much!

PS: I want to use x.264 to save this piece of art from vanishing, I am not thinking of anything evil.

[smok3]

the 1st one should be ok, check the vertical resolution of the converted (use mediainfo or similar), should be 720px (or slightly less).

[Moppelkotze]

Thanks! ...and that will be ok for my 4:3 Tube as well as 16:9 LCD (which I am planning to buy)?

I opened the first with mediainfo and Quicktime and now I am wondering.
Before conversion Handbrake said:
Source: 720x576
Output: 702x576
Anamorphic: 748x576
(I enabled cropping as you know)
Mediainfo says:
- 702x576
- Display aspect ratio: 1300
- scan type: progressive
(you get the second and third info, if you just rest the mouse over the video info)

Quicktime says:
- Format: 702x576 (749x576)
- Normal size: 749x576
- size at the moment: 749x576 (original size)
(sorry for translation)

With every of the tried "options" as shown above, I have symptoms that somehow look as if I had an interlaced signal.
If someone e.g. jumps, you see the person before and after at the same time and between both situations there are black lines in the colours that range from the edge of the first to the edge of the following situation.

It is 720x... so it must be progressive as I understand it, right? Progressive and in other words deinterlaced, isn't it? So the source needn't be deinterlaced per Handbrake, right?

[smok3]

assuming that is not uberly important video, yes deinterlace it.

as well as 16:9 LCD (which I am planning to buy)?
sure, pillarbox is the only correct way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarbox

[Moppelkotze]

Thanks!

concerning deinterlacing: Yes, but I meant, shouldn't it already be deinterlaced from the source (DVD)? So I would not need to deinterlace it with Handbrake in order to put it on a Harddrive connected via USB to my TV-mediaplayer?

[smok3]

I dont deal a lot with interlaced sources, but i would;

0. (is this film or video?)
a. test the 1st file (you allready have on the tv), cool or what?
b. deinterlace, test (does it suck, will it play)?
c. read about interlaced encoding with x264 and again retest the playback.
d. something else is wrong, back to drawing board

(yes, DVD sources may be interlaced)

[hello_hello]

My two cents....

PAL DVDs can be either progressive or interlaced. It sounds like you need to enable de-interlacing (I don't use Handbrake so I can't tell you how exactly).

DVDs don't use square pixels. The 720x576 worth of pixels are stretched on playback to display as either 4:3 or 16:9 (whichever one the DVD might be). Anamorphic encoding works the same way. You'd encode a 720x576 DVD using the same 720x586 resolution while setting the playback aspect ratio to match. Not all playback devices respect aspect ratios when playing MKV or MP4 files though, so when using anamorphic encoding you're not guaranteed the video will display using the correct aspect ratio.

The "aspect ratio" options resize the DVD as it'd be resized on playback, then encode it using square pixels. So your 720x576 DVD will probably be resized to something like 720x54, which is very close to 4:3. Any device capable of playing the video will display it correctly. When encoding 4:3 DVDs, I'd go with this method.

Cropping removes any black bars and junk from the edges of the video, but when cropping the above principles still apply, howver as some of the video has been cropped (even if it's only junk) the aspect ratio and/or resolution may change, however the actual picture aspect ratio (shape of objects in the video itself) should remain the same.

TV's "overscan", which means they don't actually display the whole picture..... think of zooming in on the picture till the edges of the image extend off each side of the screen. That's why you don't see the crud or black bars around the edges when viewing the DVD on a TV, that part of the picture extends off the screen. If you crop the black bars and junk while encoding though (most people do) it means when viewed on a TV the effect will be to loose a little more of the picture off the edges of the screen.

Aside from encoding using Handbrake.... given this DVD is obviously valuable to you, rip it's contents to your hard drive and back them up somewhere. MakeMKV will take a DVD and stick it's contents into an MKV file. No re-encoding involved, nothing lost, no quality difference. You can still re-encode it, but you've always got the audio and video in their original form, just in a different container.
Another option is to use DVD Shrink to create a backup copy of the DVD you can burn as a normal video DVD and play in any DVD player. If the contents will fit on a single layer blank discs, DVDShrink won't re-encode anything. If not, it'll "shrink" the original DVD to fit. Or you can burn to a dual layer DVD so DVD Shrink doesn't need to shrink it. That'd be my first priority..... get the original audio and video off the disc and save it, worry about how to re-encode it properly later.....
You can even take an "image" of a DVD and save it as an ISO file (it's like a zip file for backing up discs). It'll probably be large, but the ISO file will contain the original DVD contents in their original state. Later on you can still burn the ISO file to a new disc, or extract it's contents to re-encode them. I'm pretty sure DVDShrink will save DVDs to ISO files.

[Moppelkotze]

@smok3:
I read about interlacing and x.264, is there something I am missing? Here is what I found. The deinterlacing in Handbrake under x.264 is actually considered bad, so they inlcuded other deinterlacing methods. One can choose from "fast" to "slowest". "Fast" is the all time common deinterlacing used with x.264, they say, but it is bad. "Slowest" is the best, it looks at the foregoing frames and coming frames and when it has done that it looks at them again. This takes longer, but is better.

I tried deinterlacing and now the small lines between some actions have disappeared, but now static areas seem to be "flickering" (the lines of a frame of a window or lines in the wooden front of a typical American house).

Oh, and what is the difference between "film" and "video"? I am not a native speaker. Video is a taped film or series (TV show) for me.

@hello_hello
I did create an Image with the Mac OS disk utility prior. Though I can use it to apply x.264 to it and such. I am not able to make a backup of it that is playable on my laptop. The reason is missing protection-key.

On your comments on anamorphic, aspect ratio etc.: I am happy with your answer, but it also means, I would ideally have to make an extra conversion for every device in my home that I want to use it on. Which maybe, why you mentioned the backup thing (since Image/ISO does work, but is protected, would it be work with MakeMKV or DVDShrink?) Oh, do I see it right that MakeMKV and DVDshrink are both not for Mac OS X PowerPC?

My mediaplayer was made Nov. 2011, firmware from March 2012. What puzzles me, is that all of the versions I tried (as mentioned above) are displayed the same. No matter, if I apply anamorphic or keep aspect ratio etc.. Arround all files the same parts are missing (which is maybe because of the Tubes overscan), they are missing horizontally and vertically.
The only difference I had, was when I unchecked "anamorphic" and unchecked "keep aspect ratio" and unchecked "cropping". The result is, that I only win picture parts on the left and right (the aspect ratio is wrong then, though it is not immediately visible for the eye).

The mediaplayer seems to be able to display all but that one version in the way it should be ok on the Tube. Allthough I had "cropping" unchecked with some.

Here is the versions again:
1 - anam. + crop
2 - anam. without crop !!! should give extra horizontal parts, but looks the same as with cropping
3 - aspect ratio without crop !!! should give extra horizontal parts, but looks the same as with cropping
4 - aspect... + crop
5 - without neither + crop
6 - without neither and without crop !!!more horizontal parts are added, but aspect ratio is wrong

Again 1-5 are displayed identical.

[smok3]

for x264 interlaced encoding, see x264 --help (tff, bff), no idea how is that presented in handbrake.