Anamorphic widescreen problem

[sbueffel]

I apologize if this has been asked before..just point me in the right direction if it has...

So far I have ripped Ocean's 11, Serendipity and The One using SmartRipper. The latter two did not need to be transcoded because of short enough length, but I had to shrink O11 by 15% according to the steps on this site. Both O11 and Serendipity play back fine on my widescreen TV, but on a 4X3 screen the movies have lost their ability to play in letterbox format (tall and thin people). No setting on the player corrects this. The One also plays fine on my widescreen AND comes across as letterbox on 4X3. I thought my transcoding might have had something to do with it, but Serendipity didn't need it and it does it, too.

Is there a SmartRipper setting I am missing and\or is there something about the movies A\R that is causing it on the two but not The One? Your help is appreciated. Thank you.

Scott.

[EnemyWithin]

Check the VTS_XX_XX.IFO file (of the main movie vob's) in IFOEDIT and verify that the aspect ratio is set correctly. The anamorphic movies (the ones being stretched vertically) need to be set to 16:9.

Also, read this from http://www.doom9.org for a good explaination of aspect ratios.

[sbueffel]

Ocean's 11 has this entry on my burned version:

Title Set (Movie) attributes:
Video: MPEG-2 720X480 (NTSC) (NTSC 525X60) (4:3) (not specified perm. display)
....then audio stuff.

I have loaned my copy of The One (the one that works fine on both TV styles) for testing so I can't look at that. Is the 4:3 not correct above? Remember, it plays find in widescreen mode on my widescreen TV. On a 4X3 it looks like the player has been set to widescreen mode but none of the A/R settings for the player will change the actual output to make it appear letterboxed. If it is not correct, where did the change occur, ripping with SmartRipper, transcoding, or authoring in SpruceUp (to retain the AC3)? Since it also happened with Serendipity I assume it is either with ripping or with SpruceUp. How do I fix this in the future? Thanks for your help.

Scott.

[EnemyWithin]

SpruceUp only outputs 4:3 so you will always need to use IFOEDIT to adjust it to 16:9 for anamorphic movies. Just double-click on that "Video:MPEG-2" line and change it to 16:9. Then save the file under the same name.

[sbueffel]

Editing that and playing it back from file did exactly as you said. It worked great. Thanks for pointing that out. I never would have figured that out on my own. And it is nice to know that, especially since I still have the iso images on my PC, I can just edit the file and burn again. Thanks a lot.

Scott.