Sorry another aspect ratio question

[mark1969]

Hi all

I have several movies to convert using TMPG, but i'm unsure of what aspect ratio i should be using, i am playing back on a wide screen tv.

An example of one is:

640 x 304 (2:21:1) 23.976 fps

I not sure what the settings should be in "Expert settings for source" or "source aspect ratio" under advanced settings. (i use the wizard)

I have done a search and read the forum, and noticed that loads of newbies like myself have problems with aspect ratios, it would be really useful to have a list of different aspect ratios and the settings to use for each, is there one available?

Thanks for any help


Mark

[Vejita-sama]

To answer your question, choose the TMPGenc film template of your choice, click on settings then choose the advance tab and choose "full screen preserve aspec ratio". That should do it, however:

There are three things you need to understand to fully answer your question:

Display Aspec Ratios (DAR)
Anamorphic DVD
NTSC framerates for TV and film

This has all been done before so here are some good links to look at for more info:

DAR/Anamorphic
http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/aspectratios/widescreenorama.html

Teleciding:
http://www.doom9.org/synch.htm

Here's a short (really ) overview of the whole process.

DAR - there are 3 DARs that you're likely to see

1:1 PC
4:3 TV
16:9 film and widescreen TV

Under the 16:9 DAR you'll find several ratios including

1.85:1 academy flat
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen
1.77:1 widescreen TVs

Here's a short history (see links for more) of how the whole system got screwed up. Basically films are shot at 16:9 DAR. TVs can ONLY display 4:3 DAR. So to get a 16:9 movie to fit on a 4:3 screen you have to either:

1) stretch the film out and add black bars to the top and bottom making a new 4:3 video (letterboxing)
2) cut off the left and right parts of the video to create a new 4:3 video (full screen [or pan scan])

Letterboxing was the best choice for a long time. Then widescreen TVs came out. If you show a 4:3 source on a widescreen TV there will be black bars on the left/right of the video. Which is cool. But play a 4:3 letter boxed source on a widescreen TV and you've got black bars on all four sides of the video (widescreen adds left/right and video contains top/bottom). Plus a widescreen TV is already has a DAR of 16:9 so there's no need to letterbox.

Therefore we could release two copies of each movie. One letterboxed (4:3) for normal TVs and a non-letterboxed (16:9) verison for widescreen TVs. But that's costly. With the introduction of DVDs (ie. digital) technology what we can do instead is make an anamorphic DVD.

The video is encoded at 720x480 and then the DVD is flagged as 4:3 or 16:9. The video takes up the full 720x480 resolution. Now let's say you play a 16:9 flagged DVD on your 4:3 TV. The DVD player reads that the discs is 16:9 and your TV is 4:3 and it adds the letterboxing ON THE FLY. If you have a widescreen TV the DVD player reads the disc as 16:9 and your TV as 16:9 and does nothing.

Rather then get into 23.976 vs 29.97 please read the teleciding link above. But in summary you need to apply the 2:3 pulldown flag when you encode in TMPGenc OR encode at 23.976fpm and then run pulldown.exe yourself. I say let TMPGenc do it for you

Hope this helps some...

[Vejita-sama]

Oh BTW since your source appears to be DivX set the source DAR as 1:1 (all pc video should be 1:1) sorry forget to mention that one

[mark1969]

Wow!!

Thank you for your in-depth answer, I really am a newbie!!

I'm going to have a good study or your reply and study the links.


Thanks again

Mark

[Vejita-sama]

No problem. Like I said set source to 1:1 VGA, output to desired TV, and video arrange to "full screen keep aspect ratio" and you'll be set. You'll need to apply the 2:3 pulldown either in TMPGenc (automatically checked in the film templates) to convert the framerate.

Read the guides (esp the Basics Section at http://www.doom9.org) and the widescreen-o-rama stuff and it'll all make more sense (plus have pictures).

[mark1969]

Hi me again!!

Well after readinr advise I've converted and burned two movies,
one normal film and a cartoon movie for the kids.

Since I've been burning films I've probably burned about 20 movies with varying quality results from barley watchable to medium quality.

After having followed your advice i set up tmpg and tried yet again,
the results were brilliant!!

One piece of advice that you gave me which i used was to to use 1:1 VGA
if the source was a downloaded file, in the past with all my movies i've always messed about in tmpg changing the settings and never used the 1:1 VGA- i used it thon these ocasions and the results were 100% better.

So all in all its all good, thankyou!!

One more question though, in the past i have never used 2:3 pulldown and my standalone has never had any trouble playing any of my movies, does this mean i don't have to worry about using this option or will i get better results if i do?

Thankyou once again

Mark

[Vejita-sama]

2:3 pulldown and teleciding is kind of confusing (read the doom9.org link above on the whole process). For me, a short history lesson always mores more sense to understand how things ended up in the (pseudo-mess) we have now

When TV was invented a frame rate was picked (~30fps) that was needed to give smooth/fluid motion. But the technology of the time couldn't produce it. So someone came up with the idea of spilting each frame in half. First we'll send all the even lines of each frame and then send all the odd lines. So in fact each TV frame is actually made up to two fields (odd and even, sometimes called top and bottom). So your 30fps TV is actually displaying 60 fields/sec.

Films are shot at 23.976fps progressive. Progressive meaning that each frame is a complete still picture.

Now you have to convert that 23.976fps progressive source to a 29.97fps interlaced source for you TV to display it. This is done by a process know as teleciding (aka 2:3 pulldown). I'm not going to discribe how that works (read the link) but trust me it's possible.

Now there are two ways to telecide digital media. One run the teleciding process then author the DVD/video. OR you can leave the video at 23.976fps and flag it, then the DVD player will apply the 2:3 pulldown on the fly.

Some DVD players don't need the flag. They see 23.976fps video and telecide it without asking. Some DVD players support progressive output. So it's possible to not flag your video and still have it play fine. In fact, many DVD players will play any framerate you give them (it'll just look slightly off on your TV).

Here's where most people get confused about teleciding. If you have a telecided video source and you want to edit/re-encode it, it's best to convert it back to 23.976fps first. Why? Beacuse you get a higher bitrate/frame that way. eg:

1850kbit/s @ 23.976 = 77.16 kbit/frame
1850kbit/s @ 29.97 = 61.73 kbit/frame

In this case that's a 25% increase in bitrate per frame! That means better picture quaility. It also means that if you're making x(S)VCDs you could work with lower bitrates to get more video on each CDR (for DVD it's less of a problem).

You'll still need to apply the 2:3 pulldown or flag your video to have it play correctly on your standalone.

[SIRCOOKS]

honestly, in my opinion, it depends on your dvd player, im my instance hears my advice, i have an apex dvd player, that playes anything, and honestly the best aspect ratio if found is 4:3 display, at full screen...thats the ******* best man, it looks literally like a dvd, only a vcd

[Topher5000]

Vejita-sama, I'm having problems with a divx that's encoded as a 640x272 (2.35:1) PAL (25 fps). My DVD player (Panasonic CP67) doesn't play SVCDs, so I'm creating a 480x480 MPEG2 & doing the header trick.
If I set TMPGEnc to Source aspect ratio: 1:1 VGA & Video arrange method to Full screen (keep aspect ratio), the resulting mpeg appears stretched vertically viewed on the computer, as in Vdub.
If I set the source aspect ratio to 16:9 625 line PAL, the mpeg appears correct on the computer. However, I think I did this the last time & it looked stretched horizontally on the TV ( a 56" 4:3 Zenith). Should I leave it at 1:1 VGA & see how it looks on the TV?

Thanks,

Chris

[mark1969]

Vejita

Last night I followed your advise and encoded a 23.976 fps movie and as you said i used the 3:2 pulldown, i burn't it this morning,

The results were no-where near as good as when i don't use it

Is there a reason for this? The still pictures were excellant but as soon as there was any movement in the film it seemed as if there was like a ghost kind of effect going on, like people(or anything moving) were dragging a shadow of themselves behind.

My standalone player is a pacific 1002?

Any Ideas

Cheers

Mark

[illini19]

Mark, I too did the same thing...encoded a 640x272, 23.976 fps using the 3:2 pulldown.

Burned onto DVD and it was like each frame was dragging.

Very strange..back to the drawing board.

[Topher5000]

Is your source a PAL movie? I tried to change the framerate of a PAL movie to 23.976 fps & used 2:3 pulldown & got the "dragging' effect (to me it was more of a stutter). I ended up setting the source type as PAL, & left the frame rate at 25 fps. I have to do the header trick, but playback on my DVD player is smooth & looks great.
Come to think of it, I don't know if I had set the source to PAL when I tried to convert it to 23.976 fps with pulldown. Make sure that's set & see what you get. If the action's smooth, let me know. If not, try just leaving it to PAL & see if your DVD player will handle it.

HTH

Chris