Video cropping without re-encodeing

[MalickT]

Hi.

Im using WMP-HC to playback videos.

Every time I get IMAX bluray I have to re-encode to get rid of the IMAX 16:9 scenes so that whole movie is wide screen 2.35:1
Obviously re-encoding takes huge amount of time.

Is there a playback setting in WMP-HC (or some plugin codec) so that I can crop 140pix from top/bottom?

I do now know how they do it in movie theaters. I saw "First Man" in regular cinema and its aspect ratio always was 2.35:1 while in IMAX cinema the aspect ratio changed in the moon landing sequence.

I now have the movie in bluray and I wish to see it in 2.35:1 without re-encoding. I have 2.35:1 screen on my wall..

[sneaker_ger]

madvr (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228) (can be used in MPC-HC) can detect and crop black bars on-the-fly. Install madvr and select it in the "output" settings of MPC-HC. In madvr settings: "processing"->"zoom control" activate black bar detection and cropping.

[MalickT]

Nope, did not help. Does not work...

[sneaker_ger]

Did you tick "crop black bars"? Are you using DXVA/D3D11 "native" decoding? It still doesn't work with those, only copy-back or software decoding. If you want to remove top and bottom of IMAX scenes set "if black bars change pick one zoom factor:" "...which doesn't show any black bars" as well. You might also need to set it to notify the Media Player and maybe change your screen resolution.

[MalickT]

I set everything in MadVR as you suggested. I am using DXVA2 (native). I managed to crop IMAX scenes if I use DXVA2 (copy-back) but then the hardware acceleration does not work and my CPU cannot handle video encoding very well.

[sneaker_ger]

If native decoding works then copy-back should work as well. In LAV Video you can see what decoder is actually being used ("Active Decoder: ..."). Copy-back has more overhead because the data is copied back and forth from/to GPU. Did you try pure software decoding? Depending on CPU/GPU/file it may work better.

Otherwise MPC-HC also has some manual zoom/pan options. Maybe those work for you? I'm thinking settings output resolution to a 2.35:1 one and then zooming in manually.