2 Movies: Different Aspect Ratios?

[PeteCress]

Playing the movie "Avatar" through an HD200 hooked up to a Vizio Razor-series LCD TV (16:9 screen), people's faces look pretty much normal and objects seem tb the right shape.

But when I play the movie "Alegria" (Circque du Solel), people's faces are clearly too wide.

I fooled around with a few settings, but keep coming back to the fact that two movies appear to render differently on the same setup.

Same deal with another HD200 hooked up to an old Aquos 4:3 analog LCD.

Aspect Ratio = Source on both.

I'm probably doing something wrong, but what?

[GKusnick]

Where are you playing these movies from? If they're DVDs or DVD rips, then the difference is probably that one of them is anamorphic (squeezed horizontally down to 4:3 in the expectation of being stretched back to 16:9 on playback), and the other is just plain old 4:3, not meant to be stretched.

If they're not DVDs or rips, then you'll probbaly need to say more about where the source material came from.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Where are you playing these movies from? If they're DVDs or DVD rips, then the difference is probably that one of them is anamorphic (squeezed horizontally down to 4:3 in the expectation of being stretched back to 16:9 on playback), and the other is just plain old 4:3, not meant to be stretched.

Thanks.

I will re-rip the offending DVD and report back.

[paulbeers]

Do you have your aspect ratio set to Source? Otherwise if you have it set to Fill, it will take a 4:3 video and stretch it out. Never set to Fill if you want everything to look right.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Never set to Fill if you want everything to look right.

Unless you're playing an anamorphic DVD, which won't look right unstretched.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

I will re-rip the offending DVD and report back.

Re-ripped a few different times - Main Movie, full DVD via DvdShrink, then just drag-drop copied from the DVD.

No improvement.

What I did notice, though, was that when I open a .VOB file with VLC Media Player I get the same goofy face proportions.

But if I do a Video | Aspect Ratio | 16:9 in VLC, the proportions are corrected.

If I go back to Video | Aspect Ratio Default, the proportions return to the problem state.

[GKusnick]

I don't use either DVDShrink or VLC, so I'm not familiar with the specifics of those programs. But I believe that what you're seeing is not a bug. It's an annoying but expected consequence of the fact the DVDs come in two different flavors.

4:3 DVDs have 4:3 content recorded in normal 4:3 proportion, with no distortion.

Anamorphic or "widescreen" DVDs have 16:9 content deliberately squeezed horizontally to fit in a 4:3 frame. These DVDs are not meant to be played back in normal 4:3 aspect ratio and will look distorted if you try. They're meant to be played back in stretched mode, to restore the correct 16:9 proportions. This is why HDTVs have a "stretch" or "anamorphic" display mode.

Unfortunately there's no machine-readable flag on the DVD to tell the playback system whether it's 4:3 or anamorphic. So it's up to you to manually select the right playback mode by inspection. If faces look squeezed, go to Fill or Stretch mode. If they look too wide, go to 4:3 or Normal mode.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

4:3 DVDs have 4:3 content recorded in normal 4:3 proportion, with no distortion.

Anamorphic or "widescreen" DVDs have 16:9 content deliberately squeezed horizontally to fit in a 4:3 frame. These DVDs are not meant to be played back in normal 4:3 aspect ratio and will look distorted if you try. They're meant to be played back in stretched mode, to restore the correct 16:9 proportions. This is why HDTVs have a "stretch" or "anamorphic" display mode.

Unfortunately there's no machine-readable flag on the DVD to tell the playback system whether it's 4:3 or anamorphic. So it's up to you to manually select the right playback mode by inspection. If faces look squeezed, go to Fill or Stretch mode. If they look too wide, go to 4:3 or Normal mode.

I think this one is a 4:3.

In spite of what I said about it looking wrong on the Aquos analog (preseumably a native 4:3 screen) it looks perfect via Client on my little 1020x600 netbook.

I guess what's missing is a way to force 4:3 on the Vizio Razor.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Anamorphic or "widescreen" DVDs have 16:9 content deliberately squeezed horizontally to fit in a 4:3 frame. These DVDs are not meant to be played back in normal 4:3 aspect ratio and will look distorted if you try. They're meant to be played back in stretched mode, to restore the correct 16:9 proportions. This is why HDTVs have a "stretch" or "anamorphic" display mode.

Unfortunately there's no machine-readable flag on the DVD to tell the playback system whether it's 4:3 or anamorphic. So it's up to you to manually select the right playback mode by inspection.

Out of curiosity, why then do my 4:3 DVDs and my widescreen DVDs play back "correctly" (i.e. unstretched) on my 16:9 TV when I'm playing them back on my DVD player and my HD extender? I always assumed there was a flag in the video that said what the aspect ratio is.

[stanger89]

Yeah, there's AR information in the DVD video stream. Sage should (when AR set to "Source" and Display Aspect Ratio set to 16:9) pillarbox (bars on the sides) 4:3 content, and stretch 16:9 content.

Technically with DVDs everything is anamorphic and everything needs stretched in some way. DVDs contain either 4:3 (1.33:1) or 16:9 (1.78:1) content, but the pixel aspect ratio of the data on the DVD is actually 1.50:1, so 4:3 content actually needs to be squished a bit.