change default aspect ratio without re-encoding?

[boonesmi]

i have a couple video files that have the wrong default aspect ratio.. it doesnt matter which player i open them with they all try to play in a widescreen format (which distorts the picture making everything look short/fat) i can go in an over-ride the default and set the aspect ratio at 4:3 (which fixes the problem)

my question is: is there any simple utility i can use to just change the default aspect ratio so players will try to play in a 4:3 ratio instead of the incorrect 16:9. preferably something that wont re-encode the video file

[manono]

And what kind of video files are these? AVI, MPG, what?

[boonesmi]

lol, yeah that was kinda important info i should have included

they are .avi using an older xvid version for the video



i just tried this utility
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/MPEG4_Modifier

and it seemed to do the trick!!!



figured i should post it so if anyone like me does a forum search (like i did) maybe they will see this one

[Nico Darko]

Hi,

I'm using MPEG4 Modifier to change the aspect ratio of my avi files and it works great !

The only thing is that I have a lot of files and you can only edit one video at a time, so takes a lot of time. Do you know a similar software that would do the same thing but for several files in a row ?

Thank you.

[poisondeathray]

You can do it with CLI batch file

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=117553

[Nico Darko]

Thank you, but this is gibberish to me. How do you use this ?

[poisondeathray]

Look on post 52, 53 for example syntax

Place a copy of mmcl.exe in the directory of AVI's to be processed

Open a command prompt, copy & paste the command line, push enter

(you would change the command to the AR that you want e.g. 169ntsc or whatever - see the 1st post for the options)

[Nico Darko]

I still don't understand how this works. I placed a copy of mmcl.exe in the files' directory, I opened a command prompt and entered :

FOR %I IN (*.avi) DO mmcl.exe --dar custom 4:3 "%I" "%I.avi"

Nothing happens. What else should I do ?

[poisondeathray]

What do you mean nothing happens?

I just tested exact same command line and it works fine . There should be a copy of each AVI with the AR changed

Are you sure these are AVI container and MPEG4-ASP ? (it won't work with anything else)

[Nico Darko]

Yes I'm sure they are AVI, it works fine when I'm using mpeg4 modifier, doing one file at a time.

Are you sure I don't need to do something else ? there are 18 avi files in the folder.

[poisondeathray]

Are you running as administrator? maybe you don't have permissions to run certain things ?

Did you open the command prompt in the same directory of AVI's ? If not, you have to navigate to that directory or place the full path names

I just tested it again - I'm 100% sure it works .

[Nico Darko]

It's working ! I didn't open it in the directory of avi's. THANK YOU !

[Nico Darko]

Another question. Do you know if there is a program that would do the same thing but for mkv files ? Thanks.

[poisondeathray]

Another question. Do you know if there is a program that would do the same thing but for mkv files ? Thanks.

you should be able to do it with a mkvmerge batch script

there is sort of a GUI called jmkvpropedit, you might add the --display-dimensions to the extra parameter

read there mkvmerge documentation, there are examples of the commands and syntax there

[Nico Darko]

Thanks, I'll try it.