Matroska Anamorphic Support (Thread Split)

[r6d2]

Originally posted by KpeX
For short, compressible movies, I keep the original AC3 5.1 mix and do an anamorphic video encode using Matroska to enable low video bitrates.
@KpeX, just curious, what do you exactly mean by anamorphic in this context? I think we are talking AVIs here but I've seen several definitions of anamorphic AVIs.

[KpeX]

The Matroska container supports anamorphic encodings, you can set a display aspect ratio flag, kind of like an SVCD in a way. For example, I might encode a 2.35:1 video at 512 x 272 or 544 x 272 and then set the Matroska display ratio to 640 x 272, which gives quite a compressibility increase. As far as I know this is not possible with any other containers.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by KpeX
[B]The Matroska container supports anamorphic encodings, you can set a display aspect ratio flag, kind of like an SVCD in a way.
Yes, i've tried that and I'm surprised that it has got so little attention. Don't want to be so off-topic, but do you keep the source PAR or do you correct? (maybe this thread could get splitted).

[KpeX]

Thread splitted/moved. I'm also surprised it hasn't gotten more attention, it makes a lot of difference in getting a quality 1 CD rip. As far as preserving the original PAR - no, I usually just resize as I would for a 1:1 PAR encode and then hack off a few increments of 32 on the horizontal.

However I think it would be useful for 2 cd rips, when attempting to preserve the original DVD as much as possible, to simply just crop black bars and leave the original size, then flag the Matroska file as 16:9. Then a rip could be accomplished with the original DVD resolution, original PAR, original audio, original chapters, original picture subtitles :D all possible with Matroska.

[ChristianHJW]

Try this here (http://matroska.free.fr/samples/anamorphic/index.html) guys, you'll like it ;)

[tiki4]

Now, I've got a very stupid question: How would I encode a 4:3 source into an anamorphic MKV with the right AR flag on playback? The idea is to save bitrate with less pixels but let the player resize to the right resolution on playback. This would be exactly what DVD does with 720:576 but I just don't understand how it's done the right way.

tiki4

[Herske]

For example: encode at 528x576 and set the playback size at 768x576.

Using MatroskaProp will make this extremely easy.

[r6d2]

You can also decide to encode the whole 720 source and expand it to 8xx or whatever. It looks absolutely terrific.

[kastro68]

Originally posted by KpeX
As far as I know this is not possible with any other containers.

You can also do it with RV9.

The only hard part is working out the aspect ratio calculations and resizing...and there is no guarantee that every player will resize the video to the correct aspect ratio.

[tiki4]

Thanks, guys.

tiki4

[Didée]

I use subtitles very rarely, so I'm not too familiar with all that stuff ... however, my problem:

- anamorph(w/o subtitles) -> ffdshow(UseOverlay) -> OverlayMixer -> correct AR on playback

- anamorph(/w srt subtiles) -> ffdshow(UseOverlay) -> DVobSub -> anamorphic playback

In sentences:
- without subtitles, ffdshow does feed the overlay mixer, all is fine.
- with subtitles, ffdshow feeds VSfilter, and VSfilter then is NOT feeding the overlay mixer.

VSfilter : 2.30
ffdshow : May-23
mkvtoolnix : 7.7.0
ZoomPlayer 2.20 3.20 [edited] ;)

Did I miss a checkbox somewhere? I would like to do anamorphic encoding also when using subtitles ...

- Didée


[edit]
@ filewalker (below post)

hrmmmph, yes it was.

[filewalker]

Originally posted by Didée
ZoomPlayer 2.20I'm sure it's a typo :D , current is v. 3.20

Cu filewalker

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Didée Did I miss a checkbox somewhere? I would like to do anamorphic encoding also when using subtitles ... ... try with good old WMP 6.4 to check if this is maybe only a Zoomplayer related problem ?

[Didée]

It works now.

Don't ask me why, when, where & who.
I did exactly - nothing, and it just started to work as expected. Scary one.

Here I stand :confused:

- Didée

[DrP]

Excellent! I have quite a lot of anamorhpic encodings and have embedded the AR into the file name and made the Open action for explorer run a script that loads the AR into zoomplayer's config.

Does this support oddball ratios or only 'standard' ones line 4:3, 16:9, etc? Some of the stuff I have is 1.548 - for instance, the image is 496 lines high and in aspect 768 wide.

[Atamido]

The way that the AR works in Matroska is that you tell it the display size (given square pixels). So, its not a matter of supporting specific AR's. You just put the specific WidthxHeight that you want it to display at. You could make a 640x480 video display as 345x878 if you wanted to.

[KpeX]

@DrP


−−aspect−ratio <ar|w/h>

Sets the aspect ratio for the track. The ratio can be given either as a floating point number or as ’width/height’, e.g. 16/9.

That's a quote right from the MKVmerge documentation, so yes, it supports almost any ratio you can come up with. Display size can also be changed with the shell extension.

Edit: beaten by Pamel ;).

[ookzDVD]

@forum,

Please someone confirm me the list of the player which support
.mkv anamorphic playback ?
Thank you.

Ps. Is the mmg (mkvtool's gui) can be used to set the AR ?

Thank you.

[Atamido]

Currently it can do it with FFDShow, so any DShow player that uses FFDShow at the end of the filter chain will have the video resized automatically.

[filewalker]

Use ffdshow-20030816.exe for anamorphic movies!!
...because in all newer versions of ffdshow the Overlay mixer is broken.

If you use the Zoomplayer, you have to select "Derived AR" from the AR settings.

source was: DVDmovie/16:9/PAL/25fps/720x576
I cropped the black borders, didn't resized and then I used MKVmerge for muxing and selected the Aspect ratio 2,35 :1 Flag there.

With this combination ("ffdshow-20030816" and "derived AR" in ZP 3.20) it works like a charme!

...but soon we won't need the overlay mixer of ffdshow for anamorphic videos anymore...read this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=65600)
With TCMP pre-RC5 (as Christian wrote) it works now and it'll work with next Zoomplayer version (without the need of the overlay mixer of ffdshow), too. :)

Cu filewalker

[zambelli]

I suppose I should chime in at this point and point out that WMV supports PAR flags as well. They are respected by WMP9 and any other player which uses VMR-9.

Also, from what I've read about Matroska PAR support, "pixel aspect ratio" seems like a misnomer. I think the more appropriate term would be "playback resolution". In WME a "pixel aspect ratio" is truly a pixel aspect ratio. A PAR of 10:1 on a WMV file with a resolution of 100x100 would make the video render as 1000x100, meaning that the every pixel is of rectangular size with an aspect ratio of 10:1.

[ChristianHJW]

Hi zambelli,

send regards to Bill, if he would like to add matroska playback to future Windows OS, he is invited to do so ... even for free ;) ...

About your comments :

Yes, you are 'almost' fully correct, as PAR is really not correct at all ! Actually, i like the expression 'playback resolution' , why did none of the native english speakers in the matroska team come up with such a nice word :D !

But, its also not perfect. In fact, there are two different ways to define AR in matroska :

1. Display Aspect Ratio ( width / height ) : This value will actually not define the real playback resolution but indicate
- what the original pixel width and height is when rendering the file.
- After switching to full screen, any player can fully use the total size of the screen, but should keep the aspect ratio defined by the 2 values.

2. Display Pixel Resolution ( width ; height ) : If a video track is tagged like this, the player should by all means only display the video at this size, irrespective of the monitor resolution and even in full screen mode. This is a special feature for artists, if they want to define a certain display size for their clips. Of course, any player can override it if he likes to do so.

But in any case you are right, none of the 2 modes will describe a PAR ...