MKV Aspect Ratio

[Valentin]

Hello all. I am using the Mac program Burn to burn video files to DVD. Burn automatically converts incompatible video files to MPG first before actually burning them.

My problem is this: I have a wide MKV file (I believe it's 1306 x 544, which is what QuickTime says, although VLC says the file's resolution is 960 x 544; why the confusion, I have no idea, as I am still a newbie when it comes to working with video) that I want to burn to DVD. I have noticed that all of the video files that Burn converts have a final resolution of 720 x 480 (again, this is what VLC says; I can't check with QuickTime, because QT is unable to play the converted MPG files). This MKV file, when converted, has basically been squished and stretched to fill 720 x 480 - not exactly what I was going for.

On the other hand, I also used Burn to burn a wide AVI file, this time whose original resolution was 1280 x 544 (QuickTime and VLC both agreed on this). The converted MPG file still had a final resolution of 720 x 480, but the aspect ratio of the original video file had been preserved, as far as I could tell, by adding black borders to the top and bottom of the video and then shrinking it, rather than by stretching it and squishing it to fit within 720 x 480, as Burn had done with the first MKV file.

I believe Burn uses at least ffmpeg to assist it in its video conversion.

As I mentioned, I am a newbie to all this, so I don't know how Burn handles its video conversion. Nevertheless, I think the squishing and stretching problem is generally confined to MKV files. As such, I was wondering if there was some way that I could "trick" Burn by first adding black borders to the top and bottom of the affected MKV files myself, so that they end up with an aspect ratio of 720 / 480 = 1.5. Then, when Burn converts the files, it won't see the need to stretch and squish the files to "fit".

I have MKVtoolnix, FYI.

I hope I was mostly clear in my post. Thanks in advance for all of your help!

[johns0]

Thread moved to mac forum.

[Herve]

hi

I have a wide MKV file (I believe it's 1306 x 544, which is what QuickTime says the file's resolution is 960 x 544

quicktime displays the movie depending on its aspect options (and sometimes displays its informations including its aspect options, so do not trust them)

I want to burn to DVD. […] converts have a final resolution of 720 x 480

this is the regular size of an NTSC DVD-VIDEO (could be displayed as 4:3 or 16:9). Your weird format is not compliant with DVD-VIDEO norm

[…] but the aspect ratio of the original video file had been preserved

so there was a concern with the previous transcoding:
if QuickTime and VLC display differently, it means that your mkv file has some buggy flag/info inside it. Which one is the good one? no idea. But the display in each soft- should keep (not size but) aspect ratio.
(first, try to identifiate the real informations about your file)

bye