2.4:1 Movie mkv to 16:9 Crop

[leasedeb]

Hello
I have a 16:9 TV.
And i'd like to something like the B. in http://www.pavtube.cn/guide/rip-anamorphic-blu-ray-to-hdtv-blu-ray-ripper.html
I tried the software (the video converter from pavtube) but my mkv file only have black bars when playing in player or TV, no bars in the video.
Thanks

[Baldrick]

Please post your video details. Use for example mediainfo, open mkv, view - > text.

Or can't you zoom on your tv?

Or learn to watch movies with borders.... Many movies are in 2.4:1.

[leasedeb]

Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 9.10 GiB
Duration : 2h 12mn
Overall bit rate : 9 816 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2015-05-01 20:39:29
Writing application : mkvmerge v5.6.0 ('Kenya Kane') built on May 28 2012 06:47:39
Writing library : libebml v1.2.2 + libmatroska v1.3.0

Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Muxing mode : Header stripping
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 2h 12mn
Bit rate : 8 793 Kbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 800 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.239
Stream size : 7.97 GiB (88%)
Writing library : x264 core 144 r2525 40bb568
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=60 / lookahead_threads=6 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=8793 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No


zoom only get me ugly video ( long face )

well i would watch them in 2.4:1 if converting them to 16:9 is too hard or impossible, but it looks easy and at the same time I don't know to do it.

[videobruger]

I don't know Pavtube but most encoders can do cropping. I find Video to Video fairly easy to use (But I would never do it)

[leasedeb]

i think it is solved :
avidemux : crop right and left : 100
change aspect to 16:9
just encoding time a bit long

[videobruger]

crop right and left : 100

I believe you should use something like 248.

[newpball]

i think it is solved :
avidemux : crop right and left : 100
change aspect to 16:9
just encoding time a bit long

Congratulations, you just butchered about a quarter of your movie away!

[manono]

Congratulations, you just butchered about a quarter of your movie away!

Not only that but he wrecked the aspect ratio as well. But he would have lost a quarter of it had he done it while keeping the aspect ratio. Doing what he did he lost only just over 10% of the picture while making everyone look way too tall and thin.

200/1920=.104

To do it correctly:

800x1.778=1442.4
1920-1442.4=497.6
497.6/2=248.8

or what videobruger said. So leasedeb couldn't even figure out how to butcher his movie properly.

496/1920=.25833

Ruining it correctly would have resulted in the loss of more than a quarter of the picture.

[hello_hello]

Congratulations, you just butchered about a quarter of your movie away!

Do you really feel your viewpoint is so lame no one will take any notice of it unless you provide an illustration?

Do you really think most film makers don't frame wider than 16:9 aspect ratio shots with the thought in mind that one day they'll in some way be viewed on a 16:9 screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio? I zoom all the time on playback until the picture fills the screen. You can hardly describe it as "butchering" unless there's a meaning of the word "butchering" similar to " you wouldn't know unless someone told you" with which I'm not familiar.

I've posted screenshots of how I view video in the past. I'm still not sure I see the way in which it's been butchered/ruined. Each to their own but to m it's personal preference as to whether you want to lose a little picture off the sides or "butcher" your screen by filling it with black. Mind you I (mostly) don't encode it that way because I don't know what the aspect of my next TV screen will be, so I leave the original aspect ratio intact (mostly).

[smrpix]

You need to find a better example newbpall. That butcher shot you keep posting can easily be cropped to 16:9 or even 4:3 without losing significant action.

[manono]

You should really take me to task as well because I also agree the movie should be viewed as intended.

Do you really think most film makers don't frame wider than 16:9 aspect ratio shots with the thought in mind that one day they'll in some way be viewed on a 16:9 screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio?

For the most part, yes, I really do think it was viewed in the theater as it was intended to always be viewed. Movies were made at 2.35:1 and wider before widescreen televisions so there's no reason they might have been made for a future 1.78:1 viewing device. Although cropping to 1.78:1 isn't quite as bad as cropping (even panning and scanning) to 1.33:1, the point is the same. Some of the 'grandeur' is lost, the video will seem more 'cramped' or 'claustrophobic', as well as sometimes important picture information being lost.

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/415095/Ben-Hur/theatrical-aspect-ratio.html

There are exceptions, of course, with a film being shot for eventual display in differing aspect ratios.

[hello_hello]

You should really take me to task as well because I also agree the movie should be viewed as intended.

Much of that involves the way a personal view is expressed along with the degree to which the reader's intelligence is insulted with pictures.

I agree there's always going to be the odd example where the original aspect ratio is for some reason better, but for me much of what looks better or is more pleasing to watch also relates to the size of the screen. I have a 51" inch Plasma and I still prefer all of the screen real-estate to be used for picture where possible because to me it looks..... errr...... "bigger", although I don't mean that exactly literally...... I mean more impressive.
Take a movie that'd be 10 foot high in a theatre then shrink it down to three feet tall for a TV screen, but oh no..... we can't lose that "peripheral view" even though we can now take in the whole screen with one eye closed and a couple of feet more either side, but lets shrink it down till it's only a foot and a half high so nothing is lost from the sides.

For me "what looks best" triumphs over any guesses as to "how it was intended" in the theatre but maybe that's all just personal preference. All I know is I can be watching something on my TV, walk into the other room where exactly the same model/size TV is displaying a letterboxed picture and it instantly looks "smaller".

I was thinking about the "golden aspect ratio" which (no doubt to newpball's horror) is probably closest to 1.77 than any other common aspect ratio, and how zooming in until the picture fills the screen might sometimes make the framing appear not so "golden", but to be honest, even when I'm zooming a 2.40:1 picture to fill the 16:9 screen I can't say I find myself thinking the framing looks odd all the much. Almost never. I probably see a bit less of halls and doorways though (see further down the page for the above link). Personal preference, I guess....

You need to find a better example newbpall. That butcher shot you keep posting can easily be cropped to 16:9 or even 4:3 without losing significant action.

After looking at the pic I did find myself wondering whether I'd need to find a cloth to clean all the irony off the screen, but fortunately it didn't seem to stick.

[stax76]

It's not common but yes, I also prefer over-cropping, I always use 2:1.

[johns0]

What make and model of a tv do you have?I do a lot of service calls setting up hdtv's and they all have zoom for full screen zoom and wide zoom.

[Cornucopia]

To each his own.

Scott

[hello_hello]

What make and model of a tv do you have?I do a lot of service calls setting up hdtv's and they all have zoom for full screen zoom and wide zoom.

If you can tell me how to zoom using my TV I'd be eternally grateful. I don't need it myself (I use MPC-HC) but there's an identical TV in another room where some zooming might be handy. From memory though, when the TV's built in media player is doing the decoding the zoom function isn't available, but I could easily use a Bluray player for decoding to get around that one. The TV's zoom functions seem to mostly be designed for zooming 4:3 and I'm pretty sure they all stretch to a certain extent, but maybe I'm missing something.

The TV's a Samsung PS51D550 Plasma.

[hello_hello]

It's not common but yes, I also prefer over-cropping, I always use 2:1.

I can't say I've ever aimed for 2:1 but I've always thought it seems like a pretty good aspect ratio. I wonder why it's never been commonly used.

[johns0]

On your samsung remote there's the p.size button which does the zoom function,if it's the same as my moms Samsung lcd control function it will do what you need,i zoom her tv when she watches sd shows with borders all around and it works great since it does full zoom.

[hello_hello]

On your samsung remote there's the p.size button which does the zoom function,if it's the same as my moms Samsung lcd control function it will do what you need,i zoom her tv when she watches sd shows with borders all around and it works great since it does full zoom.

Thanks, but no luck so far. They seem to be the same options as the ones under the full picture setup menu, and this is how they're described.

Wide Zoom: View 4:3 aspect ratio pictures over a 16:9 aspect ratio TV by stretching the picture vertically (or the manual describes it as "magnifies the picture size more than 4:3").
Zoom: Stretches the 16:9 picture vertically.

The first doesn't make sense to me. How do you make a 4:3 picture display correctly on a 16:9 TV by stretching it vertically? I think maybe it assumes you're watching a PAL/NTSC video that's displaying as 16:9 and you want to stretch it vertically, but with my Bluray player connecting at 1080p all it does is stretch a widescreen picture virtually a little. The second option just stretches the widescreen picture until it fills the screen.

There's also an "auto zoom" option but it's greyed out with the Bluray player connecting at 1080p so I can't test it or read the description. If anything it sounds like it might be the one I want, but I can't select it. The manual says "automatically adjust the picture size to the 16:9 aspect ratio". That could either mean it's a proper zoom or it just stretches any picture to 16:9

None of the picture size options are available when using the TV's built in media player.

Maybe the way some of the zoom functions work change a bit according to the input resolution/aspect ratio, but I'm not overly optimistic about finding a way to simply "zoom in".

[aedipuss]

gotta love wackjobs that are willing to destroy a film just to avoid the dreaded "black bars". your choices are distort the aspect ratio or cut off 1/4 of the video, which YOU probably wouldn't miss anyway.

[johns0]

Sounds like your tv has limited zoom features,with my tv it lets me do a zoom where up and down and left and right are zoomed proportionally,same as my moms tv,i have a 2011 46" sony tv.

[newpball]

I zoom all the time on playback until the picture fills the screen.

I am not surprised!

[hello_hello]

I zoom all the time on playback until the picture fills the screen.

I am not surprised!

Yeah but you can't distinguish CUDA from NVENC so what doesn't surprise you doesn't surprise me.

You claim cropping or zooming butchers the video, even though you probably happily watch movies broadcast on free to air TV with a 16:9 aspect ratio on a regular basis without complaining because without the uncropped version for comparison how would you have a clue what was cropped?

Something's only "butchered" if the original intention is altered..... if changing the aspect ratio changes the way something is perceived. In my experience zooming in on wider screen movies rarely does that, except to make the picture seem "bigger" which is closer to how it'd be perceived in a cinema. Let's face it, if it was all about "how it was originally intended" you wouldn't watch a movie on any standard size TV screen because unless it was a made for television extravaganza it was almost certainly "intended" to be watched in a theatre at a much larger size. Show me some examples of butchery. I'm interested to see if there's more to your argument than just the usual newpball noise.

I'm watching a "zoomed in" movie at the moment, so I stopped it and went looking for shots where zooming in "butchered" the picture. I couldn't really find any. Even three person shots fit nicely in a 16:9 frame. Funny about that. Obviously you see a little less at the sides, but it can also give the "illusion" you're seeing a bit more top and bottom.





Of course there's plenty of examples where the intent was to obviously "fill up the frame" so as to make shots that don't fill much of it look more interesting, or sometimes so they don't look ridiculous. Here the guy sitting at the window is describing what he's seeing. Everything else is more or less "filler" and the focus being on the foreground objects is probably just to make the shot look more interesting.





You can call these shots butchered if you like, but you'll have a hard time convincing me because it looks better to me zoomed in on a 51" screen.

I've read interviews with cinematographers where they say they framed their shots with the thought in mind they might one day be viewed using a different aspect ratio. Especially in the later days of 4:3. The TV show Scrubs comes to mind as an example of that where the cinematographer said he framed everything for both 4:3 and 16:9, but I bet if it's ever released on DVD/Bluray in 16:9 the newpall's of this world will be furious. Except for the final season. That was originally broadcast at 16:9 so of course that'll be okay.

gotta love wackjobs that are willing to destroy a film just to avoid the dreaded "black bars". your choices are distort the aspect ratio or cut off 1/4 of the video, which YOU probably wouldn't miss anyway.

I suspect many wackjobs who claim zooming in always destroys the picture don't have a TV with a zoom function and don't know from experience what THEY wouldn't miss.

[johns0]

I have said in the past that its a bad idea to crop movies but I'm gonna say it's up to the viewer to watch the video in what ever way they want,if they miss a bit of scenery it doesn't matter what so ever when movies on pre lcd tvs were chopped to fit and nobody complained then.

[hello_hello]

Well in the interest of honesty and full disclosure, it turns out by zooming in I butchered about 15 seconds of the movie I mentioned in my previous post where the framing was a little odd. Close to the end. Just co-incidence it happened this time I guess. It's probably largely thanks to the movie predominantly consisting of "found footage" type shots, and ironically due to the style of filming someone being cut-off for a bit didn't actually look all that out of place, but it's the first time I've noticed anything like that in a while.

I'm not posting the non-zoomed screenshot because it's a fairly recent movie and it might turn out to be a spoiler if you can see the whole frame. The shot below lasted a couple of seconds before the person in it walked a bit further into the frame, but was still unnaturally cut-off for a little while.

15 seconds isn't all that tragic if the rest of the movie looks much better, but that's why I don't crop when I re-encode and zoom in on playback instead. It's not practical to check the whole movie before encoding and you never know.......

[lingyi]

By zooming in / cropping, you’ve changed the artistic composition and intent of the filmmaker which is often perceived on a semi or subconscious level. In the scene with the people sitting and looking to the right, there’s a sense of enormity and emptiness in the original that is lost in the zoomed in shot. In the second scene, the “filler” is there to intentionally focus the viewer’s visual sense on the foreground and the aural sense on what the person is describing.

While it’s true that we can now manipulate visual art to suit our personal taste, that still doesn’t remove the artists intent to have their work be viewed as intended. Yes, viewing a movie at home on a 51” screen isn’t the artists intent, but that’s why we get larger screens or sit closer to immerse ourselves and recreate the theatre as best we can.

The primary focus when viewing the Mona Lisa in on the mysterious, mischievous smile, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the painting should be ignored. Art is highly subjective and emotional with each viewer perceiving something slightly visually, aurally and emotionally different.

Many years ago in an Asian history class, the Professor asked what the viewer is supposed to focus on in a Zen garden. After various answers which included, the sand, the sculptures, the waves the sand was supposed to represent, etc., he said the viewer is to focus on the unseen spaces and nothingness that isn’t consciously there.

For me, a “great” movie is like a Zen garden. When viewed in an environment as close to a theatre as I can achieve at home (i.e. viewing at the original aspect ratio, sitting closer, darkened room, etc), it touches me visually, aurally and emotionally.

[newpball]

Indeed people certainly can view it anyway they want.

After all one can drink wine from a carton, enter a temple in flip flops or insist on putting ketchup on some nouvelle cuisine dish.

Vive la liberté!

[Cornucopia]

Very nice post, @lingyi!

Scott

[hello_hello]

In the scene with the people sitting and looking to the right, there’s a sense of enormity and emptiness in the original that is lost in the zoomed in shot.

It's also totally lost when you look at the shot in context, while the pictures are moving. They're sitting in a school gym where there's basketball practice taking place (the opening shot of that scene shows it before the camera turns around and you can still hear it) while people walk past in the background. Any sense of enormity is pretty much maintained by the ambient noise (reverb), but the camera literally zooms out for only a second or two so you can see all three guys turned to look at something in unison (screenshot, previous post), then quickly tried to pretend they didn't. Honestly, any sense of enormity you're seeing in that picture is greatly exaggerated when it's out of context. I think you're reading to much into that one.

In the second scene, the “filler” is there to intentionally focus the viewer’s visual sense on the foreground and the aural sense on what the person is describing.

Which still happens after zooming. This movie is no doubt an exception because it's predominantly "found footage", supposedly filmed by the sister of one of the guys, so many shots are intentionally badly framed, or the camera moves around in a way it normally wouldn't etc, so if anything the zooming I'm doing enhances the "feel". Unless consumer cameras tend to have a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. I don't actually know.

For me, a “great” movie is like a Zen garden. When viewed in an environment as close to a theatre as I can achieve at home (i.e. viewing at the original aspect ratio, sitting closer, darkened room, etc), it touches me visually, aurally and emotionally.

Most of the movies I watch seem to be closer to the "crap" end of the scale than the "zen garden" end, but that aside I wouldn't argue there, except to say my viewing environment is much closer to the "TV in a living room" end of the scale than the "theatre" end, and making the picture seem "bigger" by making it errrr...... bigger...... seems to help nudge it up the scale a little.
I agree with you completely. Ideally I'd project a movie on a wall or own a 200" TV and I'd watch a huge picture in it's original aspect ratio, but home viewing environments are rarely ideal, and on the "things that matter" scale a bit of zooming seems down on the "not so important" end to me. As I said though, I zoom on playback. I rarely crop to change the aspect ratio when encoding, because one day I might view the movie in a different environment. Choice seems to me to be a good thing.

[hello_hello]

I zoom all the time on playback until the picture fills the screen.

I am not surprised!

Show me some examples of butchery. I'm interested to see if there's more to your argument than just the usual newpball noise.

Indeed people certainly can view it anyway they want.

After all one can drink wine from a carton, enter a temple in flip flops or insist on putting ketchup on some nouvelle cuisine dish.

Vive la liberté!

Nope..... just more newpball static. No surprise there either.