x.264 video not stretching properly??!!??

[whitejremiah]

I know this is probably something thats VERY easy to fix, but i just started using x.264 for dvd backups, and it has impressed me so far.....my only real issue though, is however much i try i cant get the video to stretch properly during playback....basically if i set my media player to fullscreen, what i get is the video with black bars around it on both the top and bottom and the sides, basically it looks like it's boxed in........im sure it's probably something simple, but if anyone knows how to fix this (im sure someone does!!) could you please let me know how?

[Baldrick]

what do you play with?
to what resolution/video size do you convert to? 1:1 pixel ratio?

[whitejremiah]

sorry, shouldve been a bit more specific, i use MPC and i generally convert the video to somewhere around 720x360 or so....basically im ripping dvd's to x.264.......i feed the vobs to DGIndex, then use the vfapi codec, however i cant do a 1:1 pixel ratio since the vob flags for the resolution are basically ignored, so what vfapi spits out is a distorted video that needs to be resized, i tried resizing with virtualdub's internal filters, but no dice......i have however tried a few videos that i was able to do 1:1 pixel ratio and those worked fine.....(btw, for what it's worth, im using 16:9 pixel ratio on the ones that are having problems)

[celtic_druid]

I wouldn't recommend using VFAPI and I wouldn't recommend encoding via VfW or using avi as a container. Use AVISynth and the commandline encoder to encode to mp4 or mkv.

Also a DAR of 16:9 doesn't give a PAR/SAR of 16:9 Check out: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=107039 for a calculator.

[whitejremiah]

celtic_druid, i would use the CLI version, but im not THAT great with CLI....do you know of a good GUI frontend for it? As of the moment, im using simpledivx (the latest build of it that just came out with support for mkv and ogm) and although it appears to be pretty good, seems to be lacking some of the features im looking for, particularly with the codec configuration...but even on that note, still doesn't really explain the issue i was having...ive been encoding stuff using that method for a while now, and it's pretty much always worked flawlessly till i started messing with x.264...nothing really against it or anything (heck it compresses better than pretty much any video codec ive ever seen!!) but the VfW variation of the codec at least, doesnt seem to properly understand the resizing filter that vdub uses...unless im just not configuring something properly.... some of the things that im looking for is the searching ability (i.e. diamond vs hexagon vs uneven hexagon vs exhaustive) and the other options that can be tweaked to increase the quality a good amount at the cost of time---i dont really care if a dvd takes 3 days to rip, as long as the output looks good...im not particularly concerned about stuff such as internal video filters and such, seeing the source is generally retail dvds...just trying to back em up anyways.....

EDIT: just read what you said about using avi as a container...i was using virtualdubmod and using MKV as a container, as i read its got fewer compatability issues, and i just took a look at MeGUI and it looks like it may be just what i was looking for.......so much for simpledivx.....

[celtic_druid]

Encoding outputting mkv via VirtualDubMod is really no different from avi. You need to store the x264 stream as native AVC. VirtualDubMod uses VfW compatibility mode. VirtualDubMod's mkv support is just out of date.

Yeah, MeGUI would be a good start.

[whitejremiah]

im running an AMD 2400 XP+ processor and i cranked the settings up quite a bit, so it'll be a while before this is done, but i will let you know if i still have the problems or not when it's done....