Square Pixels

[jchristl]

I've read the (temp) sticky above. The dumb question here is how would I know if I had square pixels in my AVI?
:confused:

[Nick]

Open it in Media Player. If the aspect ratio looks right, it's very probably square pixelled.

Do a "Properties" from the File menu and check the resolution. Divide horizontal by vertical and see what the answer is. If it approximates to 1.33 or 1.8ish, it'll be square pixels.

[unskinnyboy]

Or open the avi in MPEG Modifier and it should indicate the PAR as below:
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/9360/clipboard013so.jpg

Or when you press the 'Video Info' button in MPEG Modifier:
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/8649/clipboard013qp.jpg

(Why isn't [IMG] tag enabled in this forum? :rolleyes: )

[jchristl]

I use Media Player Classic (nearly the same thing), and the video looks normal. The math comes out to 1.333.

So my guess would be if I had a 16:9 video and the video looked 'normal' in Media Player Classic, then I would convert it using Anamorphic instead of 16:9 correct?

If that's true then I take it there are sources of AVI that don't look normal? They looked squashed/smooshed?

Btw, unskinnyboy, thanks for the Mpeg Modifier... was wondering if there was an app that reported this. I generally use Gspot... but didn't know if it worked for this too.

[Nick]

Thanks for the tip, unskinnyboy. I rarely use MPEG4Modifier and had forgotten this feature.

jchristl - you've got the idea. But yes, there are AVI's which would look wrong. For example most DV Camcorders produce avi files at 720x480 or 576 so that they can be put on DVD without resizing. The current version of DVD2SVCD of course resizes these wrongly.