SAR not sticking in GUI using MKV

[leftspeaker2000]

Hi,

I have been ripping my dvd collection of stargate for a while now with out any problem. I am up to season 8. For some reason Megui is acting very weird. All I ever do to the source is crop the black bars and then apply an SAR in the custom command line in 264 settings "--sar 64:45" as its a 16:9 source. For some reason though this is no longer spitting out a 16:9 product, or at least sometimes it does. I know I can simply change this in MKVmerge but its an extra step. It will though work with mp4 everytime. Has anyone else been having a simple problem ?

[aedipuss]

mp4 should be encoded 1:1 square pixels. so a 16/9 dvd is ~ 854x480 or 1024x576 depending ntsc or pal. then there is no need to worry about par/dar/sar.

[leftspeaker2000]

Are you talking about mod 16 ? as in I should be ensuring my ecodes conform to mod 16. I am abit of a noob, either way no idea why it would no longer be working as it once did?

[aedipuss]

No. The resolution or size. Ntsc dvds are 720x480, pal dvd 720x576. They need to be encoded to sizes like I mentioned when going to mp4.

[jagabo]

No. The resolution or size. Ntsc dvds are 720x480, pal dvd 720x576. They need to be encoded to sizes like I mentioned when going to mp4.

No they don't. Unless you have a worthless player that doesn't respect AR flags.

[leftspeaker2000]

hey jagabo


You have helped me a fair bit in the past and you seem to know what your talking about. This is the output of the file from media info.

ideo
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 8 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 41mn 56s
Bit rate                                 : 1 057 Kbps
Width                                    : 716 pixels
Height                                   : 572 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 5:4
Original display aspect ratio            : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 25.000 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.103
Stream size                              : 317 MiB (69%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 133 r2334 a3ac64b
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.15 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=6 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

The funny thing is I opened it in xbmc and it displayed as 16:9 but in vlc it is showing as 5:4 any ideas ?

[hello_hello]

As far as I know when MediaInfo displays two aspect ratios, one is the aspect ratio written to the video stream and the other is the aspect ratio written to the container (original is probably the video stream aspect ratio).

I've never set the storage aspect ratio when setting up the x264 encoder using MeGUI and I suspect doing so is causing the problem. Do I recall you having a similar thread regarding aspect ratio problems? Also, if you've cropped the video, it's very unlikely it'll still be 16:9, so if you're setting 16:9 as the aspect ratio it'll probably be wrong anyway. You should leave the x264 encoder aspect ratio set to default and let MeGUI do the aspect ratio stuff for you.

When you set up an encode using the script creator, if you don't enable anamorphic encoding, MeGUI will resize the video to square pixels for you. No aspect ratio information will be included in the script tab and the aspect ratio used when encoding will be 1:1. If you enable anamorphic encoding you'll see the aspect ratio being added to the script tab and MeGUI should set the correct aspect ratio for you.

When you go into the AVS Script Creator configuration (next to the AVISynth Profile dropdown box) you'll find the acceptable anamorphic aspect error option. I think it's set to 1% by default. If you set it to 0%, MeGUI will calculate the aspect ratio very exactly for you when you use anamorphic encoding. As an example if your input video is 16:9, 720x576 and you crop it to 716x572, MeGUI will add this to the script tab:

# Set DAR in encoder to 11456 : 6435. The following line is for automatic signalling
global MeGUI_darx = 11456
global MeGUI_dary = 6435

By cropping some of the video you've changed the aspect ratio slightly (Imagine cropping half the video. It can't be 16:9 any more, instead it might be 32:9). In the above example it's still close to 16:9 as you haven't cropped much (11456/6435=1.7803), but with the acceptable aspect error set to 0% the aspect ratio in the script tab will change every time you crop.

So leave the x264 encoder aspect ratio alone (default), use anamorphic encoding and let MeGUI calculate the aspect ratio for you and you shouldn't have a problem.

For the record, the reason MeGUI sometimes seems to produce the correct aspect ratio while other times it doesn't might depend on the player being used, the output container and whether the player follows the aspect ratio written to the video stream or the container aspect ratio. In your above example they're not the same. If you follow the above instructions MediaInfo should only display a single aspect ratio for the output file.

[hello_hello]

Personally I don't use anamorphic encoding anymore. I resize "up" instead so there's no need to worry if the player being used obeys the aspect ratio in MP4/MKV files (not all hardware players such as those built into TVs do). So after cropping a PAL DVD to 716x572 I'd resize it to 1018x572 and not use anamorphic encoding...... but each to their own. Naturally doing so will increase the file size a bit (for a given quality).
The option to enable resizing "up" using MeGUI is in the same place as the "acceptable anamorphic aspect error" setting.

[jagabo]

I agree with hello_hello -- there's probably a conflict between the header AR info and the stream AR info.