Videos from Dailymotion with incorrect aspect ratio?

[amgray19]

Hi folks, I downloaded some old TV shows off Dailymotion. Can anyone tell me what the aspect ratio should be for these videos? As downloaded, they are 1280x720, which is way too wide. I've played around with correcting them, and nothing seems to look quite right. The closest I can get is somewhere between 1000-1080x720. Thoughts?

Here's an example of one: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5lekqs

Thanks!
Andrew

[JoeS99]

I took a quick look and it's a pre-HD show that should be 4:3 aspect ratio.
I hate it when people take a 4:3 show and stretch it to be widescreen.

[amgray19]

I took a quick look and it's a pre-HD show that should be 4:3 aspect ratio.
I hate it when people take a 4:3 show and stretch it to be widescreen.

Yes, but 960x720 would be 4:3 and the people look squished too skinny.

[davexnet]

I took a quick look and it's a pre-HD show that should be 4:3 aspect ratio.
I hate it when people take a 4:3 show and stretch it to be widescreen.

Yes, but 960x720 would be 4:3 and the people look squished too skinny.

This video has been cropped and stretched - uploaded by somebody who didn't know what they were doing.
At this point I would say use your best judgement

At frame 34113 there's a close up of a phone dial that can help, but as a guide only; it'usefulness is limited as
it looks as if the camera was at a slight angle to the phone face.
Perhaps resize to something like 1012x720

[manono]

This video has been cropped and stretched...

That's a common method used by fools that think they absolutely have to have widescreen, that somehow the original aspect ratio is inferior. But they don't want to stretch it too much and make everyone look too fat, and they don't want to remove too much of the picture (25%) by cropping from the top and bottom. So, they do a little of both. As if that somehow makes it look okay.

...uploaded by somebody who didn't know what they were doing.

That can be debated. There are maybe 1000 videos on YouTube that thieves stole from my channels, so they know how they're supposed to look. But before uploading them to their channels they do as you described, as if people won't notice. And maybe a lot of people really don't notice, or don't care. And maybe people really do think butchering the aspect ratio improves the videos. I'm referring to some really big media companies that do this, as well as smaller channels. Here's an example where a huge YouTube channel stole a video of mine and made it widescreen by cropping from the top and bottom. I can also show examples of the other two ways - stretching to make everyone fat and combining the two methods as in amgray19's video.

https://youtu.be/awJ9aeXgYJk

[davexnet]

Hi manono, thanks for sharing. I remember in the past when you talked about doing restoration work
on Indian movies. In a way, they paid you a compliment; at least they could have acknowledged your work.
Also, their Youtube download of your videos - first they had to re-encode it, then Youtube encodes it again!
So besides the aspect ratio switch, they also suffered generatational losses, at least in the picture.

I concede your point about whether somebody knew what they were doing. It's
not the technical skill but the questionable artistic choice that was made - that's how I see it anyway.