Is it time for variable resolution videos? [Archive]

Neillithan

26th February 2018, 08:10

Hi, I'm not even sure if this is possible to append multiple videos with different resolutions in an MKV container. Just stating that up front so that there's no confusion.

Basically, there are 2 different methods of handling variable resolution. The first is the way the industry currently does it, which is to put hardcoded black bars on the top and bottom when necessary, so that when the footage changes to a different aspect ratio, the video fills the *hardcoded* space that would otherwise be empty blackness on the top and bottom.

The 2nd method, is to have the video switch to the different resolution dynamically during playback, and to crop all black bars out, whether they're on top or the left and right. Zero black bars. The software or hardware would need to be smart enough to handle dynamic resolution changes, and center the video accordingly, and also shift subtitles accordingly.

The reason why I think it's time for variable resolution videos:

Years ago, it became common to alternate between IMAX cameras with a 16:9 AR, and common cameras with a 21:9 AR, such as the Dark Knight movies, inception (I think)... and a few others.

This is okay if your display is 16:9, but it's terrible if your display is 21:9, because depending on how much of the footage is 16:9 or 21:9, you may end up with a large chunk of the movie in 21:9 AR but with black bars on ALL 4 SIDES OF THE MOVIE. What the hell do you do in this situation? Do you pause the movie and change the zoom so that you can eliminate blackness on all 4 sides, or do you simply crop the entire movie at 21:9, reencode, and try to ignore the fact that you cropped out a huge chunk of pixel data for IMAX scenes that were originally captured at 16:9? This is less than ideal, considering you risk chopping off the tops of people's heads, or hardcoded text.

Also, bonus & behind the scenes footage tends to alternate between a wide variety of aspect ratios, from 4:3, 16:9, 21:9, whatever:whatever. It's incredibly jarring, especially on a 21:9 monitor.

And the issue is compounded by the fact that, services such as VUDU, Youtube, and Netflix deliver movies in 16:9 with hardcoded black bars on the top and bottom, which has prompted one person to release a Chrome extension to zoom Netflix videos for people with 21:9 displays.

The obvious pitfall of variable resolution movies is, you cannot do a fade blend between the different aspect ratios, due to the instantaneous switch from 16:9 to 21:9, and vice versa. Transition effects are a no go, unless they are realtime / software based (in other words, not hardcoded). Good luck getting creative with that.... and even then.... you would need to overlap the 16:9 with the 21:9 to get a seamless transition... which would mess up audio.... It would be much easier to just *not* have transitions and stick to an abrupt AR change.

Anyway, thoughts?

nevcairiel

26th February 2018, 10:43

Any sudden changes in image geometry would be rather disruptive and probably quite annoying. How can this be a good idea? There should be one choice for the movie and that should be kept.

Neillithan

26th February 2018, 11:06

Any sudden changes in image geometry would be rather disruptive and probably quite annoying. How can this be a good idea? There should be one choice for the movie and that should be kept.

I personally don't care if there are aspect ratio changes in a movie. I would just rather have the movie fit my monitor in all situations. 4:3, 16:9, 21:9... I'd rather the video either fit to the height, or fit to the width. Instead what happens is, I get black borders on all 4 sides. And I don't mean stretching and disobeying the original aspect ratio. Stretching is the worst.

For bonus & behind the scenes footage, there are aspect ratio changes all over the place because they bounce back and forth between the movie, which might be 21:9, and unprofessional camera footage, which might be 16:9 or 4:3. A variable resolution would be helpful in this situation.

Even if you make the movie a 21:9 aspect ratio, the industry insists on hardcoding black bars on the top and bottom, which is absolutely terrible for 21:9 monitors. I've seen a few movies on my neighbor's cable TV that were 21:9, with hardcoded black borders on the top and bottom, but forced into a 4:3 aspect ratio, which results in black borders on all 4 sides. This wouldn't even be an issue if the industry moved to variable resolution instead of hardcoding black bars to fit a specific situation.

Asmodian

26th February 2018, 11:52

It sounds like the real issue is encoding with black bars, I do not want variable resolution video but encoding a 21:9 movie with black bars is (should be) pointless. It is trivial for the player to fill unused target render space with black or any color.

However, similar functionality can be achieved with madVR. It can automatically crop hard coded black bars, it can even do it differently when the source changes and tell the video player to resize differently. It works amazingly well with players that support it (most that I have tested do).

burfadel

26th February 2018, 13:24

This would be variable aspect ratio, not variable resolution :)

nevcairiel

26th February 2018, 14:23

This wouldn't even be an issue if the industry moved to variable resolution instead of hardcoding black bars to fit a specific situation.

This also wouldn't be an issue if you used smarter software, like Asmodian suggested try using madVR, it can automatically detect and remove black bars.

smok3

26th February 2018, 15:04

If it is 21:9 and watched on say 16:9, then cropping metadata (of some sort) could be a good idea. One could extend that to cropping metadata + playing at middle 18.5:9 aspect for example. It does complicate things.

wonkey_monkey

26th February 2018, 16:41

My thought is that I wish directors would just pick an aspect ratio and stick to it. Unless you've got a very good reason for doing so - like in Galaxy Quest where it goes from 1.85:1 to 2.35:1 when they get to space, and even that's a bit of a unnecessary gimmick, since most people wouldn't even notice - just stick to one ratio.

SeeMoreDigital

26th February 2018, 17:48

Interstellar is another movie where the aspect ratios change quite a lot. It all adds to the movies overall impact, so it doesn't bother me at all :)

Edit: That being said, it's often easy to forget that the majority of movies are made to be viewed within a cinema/movie theater - on a very large screen. Not a 16:9 home TV...

StainlessS

26th February 2018, 18:06

wonkey_monkey

26th February 2018, 18:09

Interstellar is another movie where the aspect ratios change quite a lot.

It all adds to the movies overall impact, so it doesn't bother me :)

How does it add anything? Is there some particular emotion that 1.85:1 conveys in a way 2.35:1 can't?

LoRd_MuldeR

26th February 2018, 18:14

How does it add anything? Is there some particular emotion that 1.85:1 conveys in a way 2.35:1 can't?

This is the explanation for the aspect ratio change, I suppose:
Interstellar was photographed in 35mm anamorphic and 65mm 15-perf IMAX formats. When the film is projected in an old-school 70mm IMAX theater, the aspect ratio will switch between 2.40:1 (35mm anamorphic) and 1.43:1 (IMAX) at "key dramatic moments".

At 70mm screenings, the IMAX footage has been cropped top and bottom (and the widescreen footage cropped slightly on the sides) to create a 2.2:1 aspect ratio. The aspect ratio will switch between 2.35:1 and up to 1.9:1, presumably depending on the height of the screen at any given digital IMAX installation

(Source : Studiodaily)

Neillithan

26th February 2018, 18:18

Are you expecting anyone to actually vote for the 4th option ?,
There are some of us tards on the D9, but even I would not admit to it. :stupid:

PS, I hate letterboxing, anything more than 16:9 is not nice, and changing rez is ghastly idea.

4th option is a joke. lol

Letterboxing just plain sucks.

Here's a random image I found on google:

https://www.casablancaexpert.com/custom/postage-stamp2.jpg

As you can see, due to the hardcoded borders, the 3rd outcome is possible when displaying 4:3 footage with hardcoded top/bottom black bars on a 16:9 monitor.

Now, imagine how bad this is on a 21:9 monitor. It literally becomes unwatchable because to fullscreen a movie that was formatted for 16:9 with letterbox, cause the movie to become nearly HALF the size on a 21:9 monitor.

The enemy is hardcoded black bars. And if the movie industry insists on having black bars, then they must insist on perpetuating this nonsensical vertical black bar nonsense that apparently is going to continue until the end of time until people wise up to the fact that hardcoding black bars is the worst thing ever.

I don't expect the industry to *stop* hardcoding black bars any time soon because they will simply continue to alternate between variable footage, which is why I suggest variable resolution. It's a solution to a problem, which in the short term would create problems due to lacking hardware and software support, but in the long term, those problems would be eradicated through updates.

I recently played a PC game that was formatted for a 16:9 monitor, and they had a cutscene that overlayed black bars on the top and bottom to give it that "cinema" feeling during a cutscene. Well, considering I have a 21:9 monitor, 2 things happened. 1. I got black borders on the top and bottom, and then I got huge vertical black borders on the left and right, causing the "immersion" to be completely lost. All I could think about is, I was watching a cutscene through a tiny rectangle on my screen. Then, as soon as the game started, the black bars disappeared at the top, and then the vertical black bars disappeared, causing the game to perfectly fit my monitor.

The 2nd thing to happen was, I realized just how utterly pointless it would be to take 21:9 game footage, and overlay black bars on the top and bottom because you're taking an *already* native cinema aspect ratio of the monitor which is 21:9, and forcing into an even TINIER aspect ratio, which nobody uses because there comes a point when a thin ass viewing experience becomes absolutely detrimental to the immersion.

So, in the video game world, I suggest getting rid of those temporary cinema-esque black bars that appear during the cutscenes, and stop trying to narrow my viewing experience if I'm already on a 21:9 display. I've opted for a permanent cinema viewing experience by getting a 21:9 monitor, so now it just seems absolutely stupid to try and make it even more cinema.

SeeMoreDigital

26th February 2018, 18:25

4th option is a joke. lol

Letterboxing just plain sucks.

Here's a random image I found on google:

https://www.casablancaexpert.com/custom/postage-stamp2.jpgThe third image, dates back to the early days of 4:3 authored DVD's and when 16:9 TV's were a rarity.

You would only see that if you viewed a 4:3 letter-boxed DVD image on a 16:9 TV and did not enable the TV's up-scaling option.

It's a redundant scenario nowadays...

Neillithan

26th February 2018, 20:24

The third image, dates back to the early days of 4:3 authored DVD's and when 16:9 TV's were a rarity.

You would only see that if you viewed a 4:3 letter-boxed DVD image on a 16:9 TV and did not enable the TV's up-scaling option.

It's a redundant scenario nowadays...

It's not. The new standard has become 16:9, and 21:9 monitors are rapidly becoming widespread. The issue has returned. I'm not saying ultra widescreen HDTVs are suddenly going to fly off store shelves, but ultra widescreen monitors are, and that will cause HDTV makers to try and cash in on this. Maybe not now, but eventually.

Try owning a 21:9 monitor and see if you can say what you said with a straight face.

SeeMoreDigital

26th February 2018, 21:42

To repeat...

The third image is an example of what you would see if you viewed a 4:3 letter-boxed DVD image on a 16:9 TV and did not enable the TV's up-scaling option.... It has nothing to do with 21:9 monitors.

EDIT: I actually use a 21:9 monitor at one of the places I work. So I am familiar with them....

And as I also said... "the majority of movies are made to be viewed within a cinema/movie theater - on a very large screen. Not a 16:9 home TV..."

Asmodian

26th February 2018, 22:01

I don't expect the industry to *stop* hardcoding black bars any time soon because they will simply continue to alternate between variable footage, which is why I suggest variable resolution. It's a solution to a problem, which in the short term would create problems due to lacking hardware and software support, but in the long term, those problems would be eradicated through updates.

It seems a lot more likely that the industry will stop hard-coding black bars than that they will implement variable resolution. :p

Variable aspect ratio flags make sense for video with different aspect ratios being displayed at an unknown aspect ratio; you do not need to change the resolution. Or simply use a smarter player, that is possible today. :)

wonkey_monkey

26th February 2018, 23:42

"the majority of movies are made to be viewed within a cinema/movie theater - on a very large screen. Not a 16:9 home TV..."

Considering the size of the home video market in all its forms it's naive to think that the home market has no effect on movie production.

James Cameron, for one, is known for shooting with both cinema and TV broadcast in mind, moreso back when widescreen was less prevelant on the small screen.

Also a large screen far away is practically the same as a small screen close to, so there's very little difference these days.

Neillithan

26th February 2018, 23:43

It seems a lot more likely that the industry will stop hard-coding black bars than that they will implement variable resolution. :p

Variable aspect ratio flags make sense for video with different aspect ratios being displayed at an unknown aspect ratio; you do not need to change the resolution. Or simply use a smarter player, that is possible today. :)

That's an actual legit suggestion. It may not be ideal since you'll end up with non square pixels.... but.... if the resolution is high enough, nobody would ever know.

johnmeyer

27th February 2018, 18:40

I didn't realize, because the heading is totally wrong, that this is about aspect ratio.

I can't believe that, over a decade after widescreen TVs and HD became widespread, that we need a poll or anything else. The options are obvious, as are the tradeoffs: you either letterbox or you stretch. Since I want to see the entire movie, and because I understand the extremely simple "square box in round hole" conundrum that is at the heart of this, I live with the letterboxing. I've tried every stretching algorithm you can imagine, and have seen other people's attempts, including the silly attempts to fill in the black borders with fuzzy duplicates of the main video. That does not work for me. At all.

I don't really see the point of having a poll. What do you plan to do with the results? Why are we re-hashing something that has been discussed in these forums for over ten years?

Stretch or letterbox: your choice. Do as you please.

wonkey_monkey

27th February 2018, 19:59

johnmeyer

27th February 2018, 20:58

It kind of sounds like you didn't read the opening post. The question is about those videos where, for whatever reason, the aspect ratio of the active picture changes. Films such as Interstellar, for example, where the home video release has a few scenes shot on IMAX and filling the 16:9 screen, while the rest of the film is 2.35:1.

Watch it on a 16:9 screen and at most you will have black bars top and bottom during the non-IMAX shots, with the the IMAX shots filling the screen completely. But on a wider screen, such as 21:9, the IMAX shots will fill the screen vertically but the non-IMAX shots will have black on all four sides.

The proposal, then, is that only the active pixels would ever be encoded, with metadata telling the player what resolution/aspect ratio every frame/scene was so it can show each frame/scene as large as possible. IMAX shots would fill a 21:9 screen vertically, but not horizontally, while non-IMAX shots would fill the screen completely, instead of having black on all four sides.Ah, that is clear. Thank you. And, you're right, I didn't read the initial post carefully enough. My bad.

I watched "Interstellar," but I can't remember now whether I watched it on DVD, or via a streaming service (I don't own Blu-Ray). I certainly do not remember the aspect ratio changes.

So having now admitted to not only being careless about reading post #1, but also to not noticing the aspect changes during the film, my final statement probably carries no weight whatsoever:

How common is this?

I don't remember seeing it in any other film. Usually things like this hit me upside the head.

wonkey_monkey

27th February 2018, 22:55

The Dark Knight Rises was another one. As I say, I don't know why directors do it. They can shoot on IMAX and crop it to match the rest of the film, or they can crop the rest of the film to match the IMAX shots. Or they could just shoot entirely on IMAX, if it's so great. As I recall, the effect isn't too jarring, but you do find yourself squinting at the screen and thinking "What just happened?"

The only other case I can think of is Galaxy Quest, which had a legitimate emotional/artistic aim in mind. The opening of the movie is a replay of an old episode of Galaxy Quest, in 4:3. Then the modern day scenes start in 16:9, then it transitions to 2.35:1 (by widening in theatres, by... squashening on DVD, I think) when they get to space, to give it that more epic, "movie" feel.

We might be taking resolution standards a bit for granted here. We can encode anything at any resolution these days, and it pretty much works, but when you're a big group trying to push out a new standard (like Blu-ray) you need to be sure it just works. Even now I think pushing for arbitrary resolutions and aspect ratios might be a bit too much of a headache to worry about.

Sparktank

28th February 2018, 01:28

Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel also had shifting AR's, for different timelines and views of the story.
That was the most effective use of changing AR's.

One episode of AMC's The Walking Dead tried it for a season premiere to illustrate different timelines to keep the audience up to date with the story progression since the previous season finale.
They also threw in black&white scenes to further show difference in the timeline.

Christopher Nolan with The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, and Dunkirk all have mixed shots due to the limited use of the IMAX cameras.
Michael Bay also switched AR's using IMAX cameras for his last 2 Transformers movies.

For me, the switching is more about showcasing with Nolan.
The IMAX shots filling the whole screen gives an artistic feel of how big the situation is for the characters.
A very subliminal approach.

But, if Nolan was so old-fashioned, he would have shot the rest of the non-IMAX movie with bigger cameras so the rest of the scenes can be open matte.

There was an "Ultimate Collector's Edition" for The Dark Knight trilogy which had a sixth disc that contained a majority of the IMAX scenes in "original aspect ratio": 1.43:1

(box adertised it as OAR; but I guess that's more using the "classic AR" for IMAX)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAX

The switching was pleasant for me.
It's an entirely new way to watch something.

Same reason I love watching movies with SVP to interpolate the frames, and then use a pair of Chromadepth 3D glasses for passive 3D viewing.

Tron: Legacy was one movie where it wasn't filmed with IMAX cameras, but just blown up and cropped to fill a 16:9 screen.
It was still a fun experience.
It would have done better if they went 2.4:1 for the real-world scenes and then shot it in 16:9 for the digital world.

While I like the differing AR's for movies, I do see it largely as a gimmick.
As they're better off for theatrical performances.

For actual IMAX-filmed scenes, you have too many options for home media that no one will release them all:
- fixed 2.4:1 with cropped 2.4:1 IMAX so the whole movie matches
- mixed 2.4:1 with cropped 1.78:1 (16:9) IMAX for 16:9 tv's/monitors
- mixed 2.4:1 with uncropped 1.43:1 IMAX instead of cropped 1.78:1

and then you can even crop the 2.4:1 non-IMAX scenes to match either 1.43:1 IMAX or even cropped 1.78:1 IMAX.

gah.

The whole market is so limited for all the options directors have to play with.
The main problem is not a lot of the theatrical gimmicks translate well to a limited medium.

Even the new UHD-BD formats have their limitations and are mastering their discs with 2K mediums.
From the reviews, it seems they're just using the same BD masters.
Movies like Interstellar and other Nolan features with IMAX scenes aren't getting the IMAX scenes in OAR, even though the resolution is big enough that it would benefit greater than the Full-HD BD format.

I think it comes down to the market selling more 16:9 monitors/tvs more than any other that studios just feel it's best to crop the bigger image down to 16:9 to fill the whole monitor.

You'd think with UHD-BD, they'd allow for more special features and allow us to have the option to watch the movie in different aspect ratios.

I'm not voting, as I do love the switching for a new experience, but I also see how it's largely a gimmick.
Like Zack Snyder's slow motion for some of his movies being the main character.

Sparktank

28th February 2018, 01:30

The only other case I can think of is Galaxy Quest, which had a legitimate emotional/artistic aim in mind. The opening of the movie is a replay of an old episode of Galaxy Quest, in 4:3. Then the modern day scenes start in 16:9, then it transitions to 2.35:1 (by widening in theatres, by... squashening on DVD, I think) when they get to space, to give it that more epic, "movie" feel.

And now I need to watch that again.
Which reminds me, I have to get the bluray back from my brother who "borrowed" it.

johnmeyer

28th February 2018, 02:29

All this talk about aspect ratio changes reminds me of how theaters used to exhibit films, back when widescreen was still a novelty. I'm showing my age, but when a film was showing in widescreen (Cinerama, Todd-A-O, Cinemescope, etc.) the coming attractions and newsreels (yes, I am that old) were still shot on 16mm 4:3. To make the viewing audience not notice the 4:3, the theater would pull its curtains to mask the screen's sides, just like modern pillarboxing. Then, when the widescreen feature would start, the theater operator would deliberately NOT open the curtains for a few seconds and then, as the credits started, would slowly open the curtains to reveal the full screen.

With Cinerama (three projectors) the screen was unbelievably wide.

This was also done in the original IMAX film, which was shown for years at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, on the mall in Washington D.C. The movie was called "To Fly" and it started with a really small picture and then, as the balloon gained height, the image opened up to this impossibly large (no one had seen anything like this before), incredibly crisp picture. It was a breathtaking bit of showmanship.

Neillithan

28th February 2018, 02:46

It kind of sounds like you didn't read the opening post. The question is about those videos where, for whatever reason, the aspect ratio of the active picture changes. Films such as Interstellar, for example, where the home video release has a few scenes shot on IMAX and filling the 16:9 screen, while the rest of the film is 2.35:1.

Watch it on a 16:9 screen and at most you will have black bars top and bottom during the non-IMAX shots, with the the IMAX shots filling the screen completely. But on a wider screen, such as 21:9, the IMAX shots will fill the screen vertically but the non-IMAX shots will have black on all four sides.

The proposal, then, is that only the active pixels would ever be encoded, with metadata telling the player what resolution/aspect ratio every frame/scene was so it can show each frame/scene as large as possible. IMAX shots would fill a 21:9 screen vertically, but not horizontally, while non-IMAX shots would fill the screen completely, instead of having black on all four sides.

10 million points to you sir for totally understanding the point of my OP. Kudos. I regained a bit of hope for the human race after reading your response. Thank you, I shall now complete the rest of my day happy until I encounter the next moron. :) You may or may not agree with variable resolution videos, but at LEAST you understood the premise of this thread. :)

johnmeyer

28th February 2018, 04:24

10 million points to you sir for totally understanding the point of my OP. Kudos. I regained a bit of hope for the human race after reading your response. Thank you, I shall now complete the rest of my day happy until I encounter the next moron. :) You may or may not agree with variable resolution videos, but at LEAST you understood the premise of this thread. :)Thanks for calling me a moron. I really appreciate it.

I apologized, a few posts up from here, for not reading your post more closely. What else do you want me to do?? Why do you feel the need to make a snarky post? Who does that help? How will it help you get more answers to your future questions?

And, let's not forget the confusion when you titled this thread "Is it time for variable resolution video?" As pointed out by several people, that is NOT what you were really talking about, but instead were asking about how to vary the aspect ratio during playback. Very confusing.

People in glass houses ...

mariush

28th February 2018, 04:37

And what are you going to do with movies like Life of PI or The Grand Budapest Hotel ?

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R26_F7pecqo , watch it, it's short and informative.

I initially thought you were thinking of various resolutions as a means to reduce bitrate in case your internet connection can't handle the stream. Turns out it's about aspect ratios ... black bars and crap like that uses practically no bits in an encoded video, video codecs are smart like that.

Maybe an option would be to have a 4K encoded video and have like a subtitle stream so data which tells from this frame, crop from (100,100) a rectangle with size (1920, 1080) and adjust aspect ratio to this (optionally) and that's your frame. This way you could pack any aspect ratio and just crop and/or stretch whatever.

Sparktank

28th February 2018, 05:10

The info for IMAX screens is still wrong.

Classical cameras (not-digital) for IMAX go 14:10 and not 16:9 or 21:9.
If studios pushed OAR to bluray for IMAX filmed movies, there'd be black bars on the sides. Greater ones on 21:9 monitors.

For newly digital IMAX theaters, they do crop it down 1.9:1 because of limitations.
Dunkirk had multiple formats with multiple aspect ratios.
Depending which theater you went to, you could get the full open ratio from the IMAX cameras used, or get the limited versions based on the projections' technology:
https://i.imgur.com/bSHibAu.jpg

I was actually fortunate to have seen it in a 70mm IMAX theater with 1.43:1 AR.
I was hoping Nolan would release the bluray with bonus features that included the IMAX scenes in OAR and not cropped to 16:9 (1.777:1).

I have to say, watching it at home, even if it fills a 16:9 screen, it was nowhere near the same experience as seeing it in 1.43:1 in an IMAX theater.

The market is saturated with a uniform format to please the 16:9 world.
my old monitor is 4:3, so it's actually great for the IMAX scenes in 1.43:1 (bonus disc for The Dark Knight trilogy).
I was thinking of getting a 21:9 monitor, but ultimately settled for 16:9 as it is more universal (gaming/etc).

The black bars I can live with.

Even if I encoded a movie to 2.4:1, the player would automatically add black bars to fill the difference.

I tried to experiment with movies like Interstellar on trying to encode with alpha-transparent borders, or even just cropping them and telling the encoder to add them.

There's very few codecs that support alpha-transparency that are as accomplished as x264, as far as encoding quality goes.
And lossless is absolutely out of the question.

This reminds me of the few posts that would show up every now and then where someone just plain out states that a new codec is needed to cover all available codecs. Be it audio, video, or even, subtitles.

The world just settled with h265/hevc, thanks to the new UHD-BD market.
h264/AVC is the second codec they look to, these days.

We'd need a new codec specification with a new container specification, and then convince (even the cheapest, third-party, knock-offs) to conform to a new standard.

If the home projection media ever catches on with great pace, they might start looking into releasing digital mediums where it seamlessly switches files that have different aspect ratios (ala, film reels).

Although... Matroska has a "crop" metatag you can input and software (if written correctly, like VLC Media Player) will respect that tag.
You could just re-encode with the black bars, keep files separate, and then just link it all with MKVtoolnix with crop tags, playlist editing/etc.
Similar to how "Xin1Generator (https://www.videohelp.com/software/Xin1Generator)" worked with Matroska chapter/playlist to seamlessly play alternate versions of the same movie from a segmented playlist on bluray discs.

Neillithan

28th February 2018, 06:07

Thanks for calling me a moron. I really appreciate it.

I apologized, a few posts up from here, for not reading your post more closely. What else do you want me to do?? Why do you feel the need to make a snarky post? Who does that help? How will it help you get more answers to your future questions?

And, let's not forget the confusion when you titled this thread "Is it time for variable resolution video?" As pointed out by several people, that is NOT what you were really talking about, but instead were asking about how to vary the aspect ratio during playback. Very confusing.

People in glass houses ...

Whoa dude I was being serious to the other guy about him understanding the post but I wasn't suggesting you were a moron for misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are fine, they happen, and I don't fault people for misunderstanding things. Sorry if you took it as me calling you a moron. Now there are actual other morons in this forum that are more deserving of the title. I wasn't suggesting you were one of them. Please accept my apology for making it seem like I was calling you the moron because that was not my intention. There was someone else earlier who struck a chord who I insinuated was a moron.

Also you still seem to misunderstand. I AM suggesting variable resolution. However variable aspect ratio can achieve a similar desired effect by utilizing non square pixels. I'd rather an actual resolution change occur because that would be better in my opinion. So, yeah man.... I wasnt being snarky at all, I was genuinely impressed with the other guys understanding.

I'm actually somewhat hurt that you would say I'm living in a glass house because from my point of view, I perfectly and completely understand what I'm talking about, and to be told I don't, by someone who misunderstood my OP, and continues to misunderstand my OP, and actually doesn't understand what other people in this thread are telling you, it comes as bit of a shock that I would be the one living in a glass house. I may be an asshole, but I'm usually an asshole to those who deserve it. You didn't strike me as someone who deserved any criticism.