Keeping aspect ratio

[mudger]

Every time I convert a movie that has an anamorphic aspect ratio it always comes out 4:3

Can someone help please?

[Case]

Assuming you're converting to DVD, you may need to letterbox to retain the original aspect ratio.
Please provide details of your conversion preset and source aspect ratio.

[ctwelsh]

I have a similar question.

I am trying to convert a Full Screen 1.33:1 from Video_TS to .H264. Since Mencoder is the only option for that conversion I cannot Letterbox. Does anyone have any suggestions to keeping the correct aspect ratio?

Thanks!

[Case]

I am trying to convert a Full Screen 1.33:1 from Video_TS to .H264 mencoder.

Set Autosize in the Videotab to "4:3" (= 1.33:1).
If 640x480 is too large for your target format, then pick a lower width/height combination where each number is divisible by 16 and close to 1.33:1 for width:height.
(E.g. 624x464, 592x448, 576x432, 560x416, 528x400, 512x384, 496x368, 464x352, 448x336, 432x320, 400x304, 384x288, 368x272, 336x256, 320x240... Note that the height is -16 for each number in this example row, and the width is matched to the height using the aspect ratio.)

[ctwelsh]

Ok, yes that anwered my question! And things look much better.

Thanks Case

[DerTilmann]

i have the same problem as mudger, at least i think so.

it just doesn't matter what format i encode into, but to give an example, i want to encode a avi mpeg4 720x416 into ffmpeg mpeg4, so that itunes is able to play it. ffmpegx default preferences in the video tab are now ratio: 1.85:1 at 720x400

should work fine except for little corrections to be made. the thing is, that if i play the output video with itunes, it is played with the correct aspect ratio 1.85:1, but mplayer, vlc and other players use 4:3 as a default. i could tell mplayer manually to switch to 16:9, and then it is displaed properly, but thats not the idea behind it, is it?

i use ffmpegx 0.0.9x
FFmpeg version CVS, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
libavutil version: 49.0.0
libavcodec version: 51.9.0
libavformat version: 50.4.0
built on Apr 15 2006 04:58:19, gcc: 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5250)

maybe i should get a newer version? where and how can i do so?

tanks a lot for your help!

[DerTilmann]

right, i have talked to a guy who is into develpoing ffmpeg or mplayer, not sure which one. he says it is not an encoding problem, but a decoding one, and he is going to fix it. so just try and get the newest version of mplayer via svn in about a week or so, and it should work fine.