21:9 monitor and black borders

[loogiexx]

Hello there

I used makemkv to rip the video and hd sound track...
However playing back in VLC or MPC-HC I get black borders on the sides as well... that's just looks nasty.

In MPC I seem to have 2 options.. Video Frame - Touch Window from OUtside or Pan&Scan Zoom to Widescreen.

1. Not sure what the implications is of doing the above ? Does any of them have quality impact ?

2. Can I re-encode this cropped somehow ? I tried MKVToolNix which has the option to edit the headers and change the top and bottom crop, as well as pixel height... It joins my mkv files fine.. but I see no cropping or change of format.

3. I don't mind having to reencode... I encoded it to HEVC (60 GB down to 10 GB or so) using Internet Friendly Media Encoder 5.1. I want to retain the HD sound tracks which it seemed to do ok.

Thanks for any help

[hello_hello]

If the video has a narrower aspect ratio than 21:9, you'll naturally have black borders each side, but if you're using MPC-HC.....

Reset the Video Frame options and try tapping the "9" key on the numeric keypad. That will zoom in ("5" resets it). You can zoom in until the video fills the width of the screen, but you'll lose some picture top and bottom. Ctrl+8 and Ctrl+2 will move it up and down.

The only other way to fill the screen is to stretch the picture, which is pretty ugly ("6" and 4" do the stretching).

You can do the same sort of thing when re-encoding but personally I re-encode without cropping the picture or stretching and use zoom on playback instead. One day you'll probably be using a different monitor with a different aspect ratio.

The MKV container has cropping parameters. Last time I checked (which was a fair while ago) no software player cropped properly according to those parameters and I doubt any hardware players do.

[sneaker_ger]

Get yourself madVR (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228), it can be used in MPC-HC. It has an option to detect and remove black bars on-the-fly, so you don't have to re-encode. (madVR settings->processing->zoom control->automatically detect hard coded black bars)

[vrpatilisl]

hi
try to use vidcoder. it UI is very easy and uses handbreak engine.

[raffriff42]

Get used to black borders. They are not intrinsically or inherently ugly, they are - if you think of them in the right way - actually beautiful: so black, so rectilinear!

...but yeah, using "touch frame from inside" is the same as cropping. I use it sometimes, but not if anything important is lost from the top & bottom.

[vivan]

In MPC I seem to have 2 options.. Video Frame - Touch Window from OUtside or Pan&Scan Zoom to Widescreen.

1. Not sure what the implications is of doing the above ? Does any of them have quality impact ?It just crops. "Touch from outside dows" makes video fill full width of your display (2560 pixels) and crops what sticks out (180 pixels from top and bottom, since the display is 2560x1080 not 2560x1440). It doesn't know if those 180 pixels contain anything usefull, it will do the same for every video. That's why madVR solution is recommended.

...but yeah, using "touch frame from inside" is the same as cropping. I use it sometimes, but not if anything important is lost from the top & bottom.I don't think extra few pixels could contain anything important in his case (he has 21:9 monitor).