Was this DVD authored incorrectly by the distributor?

[mwesten]

The film is a British one with a North American DVD release.
It's widescreen letterbox meant for 4:3 fullscreen displays.
The PAR flag is set to 8/9, making the 720x480 display at 720x540 or 640x480 (or 4:3)
but it looks wrong to my eye. Squashed and skinny.
I've reset the flag to PAR 1 forcing the display to 720x480 (or 3:2)
and it looks better to my eye.

Could I get a second opinion?
Screenshots attached
DVD's PAR 8/9 versus Resetting PAR to 1

For what it's worth, IMDB lists in their technical section that this film was shot in AR 2.35

[Alwyn]

720x480 is better. The active picture area for that is 2.2:1, although I think that even that is still too skinny. The active picture stretched out to 2.35:1 looks the most realistic to me.

What we don't know is if they cropped a bit off the sides to make it fit better. Certainly though, the 720:540 version is definitely not right.

[Alwyn]

And, of course, not seeing the wood for the trees, the clock gives it away!

[mwesten]

The exposed open matte on the sides leads me to believe it likely received no crops there, but that's merely an assumption, there could be other reasons it's like that.
What I'm thinking of doing is conservatively cropping 7 left, 5 right, 78 top, 82 bottom
which leaves a 708x320 active picture, which at PAR 1 is DAR 2.2125
Then maybe a free resize of the vertical from 320 down to in the neighborhood of 300, just as one example, would result in DAR 2.36

[Alwyn]

IMO, it's definitely 2.35:1 from the clock.

I'd just crop all the black stuff off and resize to 2.35:1.

[mwesten]

With a conservative crop (grey trim and top stripe uncropped), and width resized to 752,
I get 752x320 which exactly divides into 2.35
Without knowing exactly how the picture was framed and conformed to the DVD,
this is perhaps as true as I can get it while also conforming to divisibility rules of 4, 8, and 16

[Sharc]

It's widescreen letterbox meant for 4:3 fullscreen displays.
The PAR flag is set to 8/9, making the 720x480 display at 720x540 or 640x480 (or 4:3)
but it looks wrong to my eye ....... DVD's PAR 8/9 versus Resetting PAR to 1

You are starting with wrong assumptions upfront:
DVD does not specify the PAR. So nobody can "set" a PAR flag to 8/9. You won't find a PAR flag on the DVD. DVD specifies the DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) only, which can be 4:3 or 16:9. The DAR is found in the .IFO of the DVD as instruction for the player how to play it. There is however an exeption: DVD also allow a PAR 1:1, although I have NEVER seen it in practice, neither in PAL nor in NTSC DVD world.
Your movie seems to be 2.35:1 as stated and supported by the circular clock. You may want to upload a snippet of the .vob (few seconds) to see what it really is.
Maybe what you have/discuss is not the original DVD source but a rip which was wrongly processed?

[mwesten]

It's widescreen letterbox meant for 4:3 fullscreen displays.
The PAR flag is set to 8/9, making the 720x480 display at 720x540 or 640x480 (or 4:3)
but it looks wrong to my eye ....... DVD's PAR 8/9 versus Resetting PAR to 1

You are starting with wrong assumptions upfront:
DVD does not specify the PAR. So nobody can "set" a PAR flag to 8/9. You won't find a PAR flag on the DVD. DVD specifies the DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) only, which can be 4:3 or 16:9. The DAR is found in the .IFO of the DVD as instruction for the player how to play it. There is however an exeption: DVD also allow a PAR 1:1, although I have NEVER seen it in practice, neither in PAL nor in NTSC DVD world.
Your movie seems to be 2.35:1 as stated and supported by the circular clock. You may want to upload a snippet of the .vob (few seconds) to see what it really is.
Maybe what you have is not the original DVD source but a rip which was wrongly processed.

I have the physical DVD in my hands.
8/9 is the PAR reported in mediainfo after MakeMKV processing.
So more precisely speaking it calculated the PAR based on the DAR and storage dimensions?
either way... I'm not looking to get entangled in semantics over that.
Playback from my computer's disc drive is 4:3 letterbox, for an active picture playback of roughly 1.96:1

[Sharc]

8/9 is the PAR reported in mediainfo after MakeMKV processing.
So more precisely speaking it calculated the PAR based on the DAR and storage dimensions?

MediaInfo and MakeMKV rip/processing as the root of the confusion and mess - as often. I would be surprised if the DVD had been incorrectly authored (the title of your post), but who knows? How does the DVD look when you play it back with a DVD player on your TV?

[mwesten]

How does the DVD look when you play it back with a DVD player on your TV?

In normal mode on my widescreen TV, it's a windowboxed presentation with an effective display picture of around 1.90625 (No screencap ability so I used a yard stick)

[Sharc]

How does the DVD look when you play it back with a DVD player on your TV?

In normal mode on my widescreen TV, it's a windowboxed presentation with an effective display picture of around 1.90625 (No screencap ability so I used a yard stick)

Strange indeed. But impossible to comment further without a snippet of the original .VOB.

[mwesten]

British films typically require PAR 16/15 to yield a 4:3 display (with sources using 720x576 storage dimensions)
However when I apply that PAR 16/15 to this 720x480 source instead of PAR 8/9, the DAR begins looking A LOT closer to correct.
Screenshots below illustrate this... the result is an effective DAR of 2.3625

And since it is a British film... you have to wonder if the North American release got things confused in exactly this way... by applying PAR 8/9 standards to a source which required PAR 16/15

[Sharc]

Yep. I came to much the same conclusion:
If one converts the active picture (~704x320) of your rip from PAR 16/15 to square pixels the active picture becomes 751x320 which is AR=2.347.
So they messed it up, (or something went wrong withe the .vob ripping).

Edit:
the "maths": 704/320x16/15=2.347

[mwesten]

Yep yep yep.
Here's the result of an encode using 16/15 PAR correction and zealous cropping.
I found a scene with a straight-on view of a mason jar lid... it's nearly a perfect circle.

So now I'm fairly confident it's meant to be a letterbox display of 16:10 rather than 4:3
(720/480)x(16/15)=1.6
720x(16/15)=768
768/480=1.6

[Sharc]

Yes. But unfortunately - whatever they meant - DVD only knows 16:9. So they won't play it undistorted. It needs to be fixed.
(Software players are more flexible of course).

[mwesten]

Yes the only viable option is a software player or a re-encode (which then also requires a software player to playback anyways)
DVD players and TVs can only display it too skinny or too wide, with nothing inbetween.
The 16x9 stretch option plays back the active picture at around DAR 2.67

[Sharc]

Correct. The source is flawed. Just not clear to me where in the workflow the flaw was introduced.
You could of course crop and re-encode with the correct ratios and then author a new DVD from it which standard DVD players will play correctly.

[Alwyn]

a re-encode (which then also requires a software player to playback anyways)
DVD players and TVs can only display it too skinny or too wide, with nothing inbetween.

16-9 DVD plays nicely on a hardware DVD player.

ISO (not allowed to upload ISOs to the forum):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ju0qHcxzz2BIPkUgeEmZsEFBPTuODOMt/view?usp=sharing

[Sharc]

a re-encode (which then also requires a software player to playback anyways)
DVD players and TVs can only display it too skinny or too wide, with nothing inbetween.

16-9 DVD plays nicely on a hardware DVD player.

ISO (not allowed to upload ISOs to the forum):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ju0qHcxzz2BIPkUgeEmZsEFBPTuODOMt/view?usp=sharing

Sure, but the OP's player might not be able to play PAL DVDs ....

[Alwyn]

Play it in VLC to see what it looks like on a DVD.

[mwesten]

My interest is just in encoding an H.264 codec file to correct specifications.
Rarely do I run into an aspect ratio issue as wonky as this one.

[cholla]

@ Alwyn,
You can put an .ISO in a .Zip file .
It just took a few seconds with 7-Zip
Then upload that to this forum.
This is the one you linked:

[Alwyn]

Thanks Cholla. I'll try to remember that.