Xmedia PAR problem

[kernel64]

I've followed some recommendations on this forum to store my DV material in mp4. So I've been using Xmedia which seems to be the choice of many for this task as its very intuitive.

The problem is that I cannot find the correct combination to kee the original aspect ratio from my DV footage (which is 1.2121). All the mp4s I've created so far do not match this PAR, some are 1.1852, 1.0940, etc.

Is there a way to specify the PAR in Xmedia when converting to mp4, so it exactly matches my source?

Thanks for the help. Excelent forum BTW, it helped me many times just reading the answers.

[DB83]

I will throw my hat into the ring on this one. Atleast if I am wrong then someone will correct me.

First of all methinks you are confused. No credible member on here would suggest you store your DV footage as mp4. Do this and you have a lower quality end product and you will not be able to recover the original quality. MP4 is a distribution medium but you should always STORE, ie archive, in the highest available quality in your case DV.

Now to answer your question. With that PAR it seems you have widescreen footage. If you attempt to create a mp4 with what you concieve to be the PAR you must set the DAR correctly. You are probably attempting to leave the video settings 'as is' or 'default'. Try an over-ride on this with the correct AR to match your video. The mp4 you create should have square pixels ie a PAR of 1.

[kernel64]

Thanks for answering. I know that going from DV to mp4 is downhill in terms of quality, but I'm a bit too low on disk space and have several hours of DV footage that I'm willing to shrink despite the loss, pushing the bitrate gives me acceptable results at about 1:5 compression ratio.

So far I haven't found the proper way too keep the same PAR so maybe I'll try other compressor, or maybe someone can suggest another method for doing this.

[poisondeathray]

Are you encoding interlaced or deinterlacing ?

You would use --sar 40:33 in x264 . You can use any GUI that allows you to enter commandline arguments e.g. megui, ripbot, staxrip etc... I don't know if xmedia has this ability to access the commandline

Not to confuse you, but "PAR" (Pixel Aspect Ratio) is called "SAR" (Sample Aspect Ratio) in mpeg4 terminology. The short version is that the "powers that be" decided to change all the terminology on us

[DB83]

Just to check that I am not going mad, I did a short encode in that program.

First off, the media info report for the original (PAL) DV

Codec : DV
Duration : 119440
Duration : 1mn 59s
Duration : 1mn 59s 440ms
Duration : 1mn 59s
Duration : 00:01:59.440
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24441600
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Encoded bit rate : 28800000
Encoded bit rate : 28.8 Mbps
Width : 720
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576
Height : 576 pixels
Pixel aspect ratio : 1.067
Display aspect ratio : 1.333
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : CFR
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000

Now the first encode:

Codec/CC : avc1
Codec profile : Main@L4.1
Codec settings : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Codec settings, CABAC : Yes
Codec_Settings_RefFrames : 2
Duration : 119440
Duration : 1mn 59s
Duration : 1mn 59s 440ms
Duration : 1mn 59s
Duration : 00:01:59.440
Bit rate : 1500000
Bit rate : 1 500 Kbps
Width : 720
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576
Height : 576 pixels
Pixel aspect ratio : 1.067
Display aspect ratio : 1.334
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Original display aspect ratio : 1.333
Original display aspect ratio : 4:3
Rotation : 0.000
Frame rate mode : CFR
Frame rate mode : Constant
FrameRate_Mode_Original : VFR
Frame rate : 25.000
Frame rate : 25.000 fps

Note that the PAR is identical with the original DV

The second encode:

Codec/CC : avc1
Codec profile : Main@L4.1
Codec settings : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Codec settings, CABAC : Yes
Codec_Settings_RefFrames : 2
Duration : 119440
Duration : 1mn 59s
Duration : 1mn 59s 440ms
Duration : 1mn 59s
Duration : 00:01:59.440
Bit rate : 1500000
Bit rate : 1 500 Kbps
Width : 720
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 544
Height : 544 pixels
Pixel aspect ratio : 1.007
Display aspect ratio : 1.333
Display aspect ratio : 4:3

Now both of these videos display the same on a monitor (to my eyes atleast) but you will note the change in the video's parameters and that the second video has, for all intents and purposes, square pixels.

If you can not replicate this then you are chosing the wrong settings.

[kernel64]

My converted mp4 footage was being interpreted incorrectly by Premiere, once I've adjusted the correct PAR and Interlace settings all was good.

I never edit in mp4 of course, I just wanted to make sure that the settings were the same on both videos (which they are according to media info - thanks DB83).

I'll be using Xmedia for the rest of my conversions.

Thanks.