Difficulty In Converting .Vob to Any Format & Keeping Widescreen

[manono]

I'm surprised that AutoGK didn't pick up that source AR automatically instead of assuming 4:3. Oh well...

I don't know why you'd be surprised. AutoGK gets the DAR from DGIndex and DGIndex gets it from the VOBs, and not from the IFOs. Like I suggested before, open up a VOB in DGIndex and run the Preview (File->Preview). In the Information screen that opens up you'll see the DAR at the top.

[JamesC01]

Is there a simple way to set the DAR separately in the VOBs? Should I do that in addition to setting it in the IFO?

[guns1inger]

I believce DVD Patcher can do it, but I don't have it here so I can't confirm.

[manono]

Is there a simple way to set the DAR separately in the VOBs? Should I do that in addition to setting it in the IFO?

DVD players play the IFOs, so for DVD playback you're OK in just changing the IFOs. For conversion to AVI using AutoGK, changing over to 16:9 in the hidden options is easier. When changing the DAR of an MPEG-2 video I use ReStream, but you'll have to demux as it works only with elementary streams and not VOBs. I don't know about DVDPatcher (either) as I don't use it. Might be worth a try.

[JamesC01]

My only purpose in setting the DAR to 16:9 in the VOB files would be if it would somehow cause AutoGK to set the correct pixel AR in the output XVid avi file for players like Zoom Player, the way I can set it manually in the XVid options when I run VirtualDub. I can set it in the avi file afterward with MPEG4Modifier, but it has to recopy the whole file, adding an extra step.

I don't think I can select source AR override = 16:9 in the AutoGK hidden settings, because my source is anamorphic 16:9 in a 4:3 frame at 720 x 480 resolution, and the only way I've found to force AutoGK to keep that resolution is to set the AR override to "Original".

BTW, I notice that although I can set the DAR in the MPEG4 stream to 16:9 using XVid or MPEG4Modifier, the effect is to calculate and set the pixel AR appropriately to produce the desired DAR when multiplied by the pixels:lines ratio. In other words, there is no desired DAR stored in the MPEG4 data, only a pixel AR.

[manono]

My only purpose in setting the DAR to 16:9 in the VOB files would be if it would somehow cause AutoGK to set the correct pixel AR in the output XVid avi file for players like Zoom Player, the way I can set it manually in the XVid options when I run VirtualDub.

Nope, not going to happen. Setting the source as 16:9 helps only for the cropping and resizing to a 1:1 AVI. If you want to encode for 720x480 and have the player resize it correctly, AutoGK won't set the DAR. You'll have to use MPEG4Modifier on the AVI afterwards.

AutoGK was developed at least partly to make nice looking AVIs for playback in standalones. Even today, several years after AutoGK was developed, there are still very few standalones that will read any DAR information in an AVI and resize it correctly. Personally, I don't see that as a drawback. If you're so intent on having this done, why not encode directly in VDubMod and set up XviD to your liking? It's not at all hard.

don't think I can select source AR override = 16:9 in the AutoGK hidden settings, because my source is anamorphic 16:9 in a 4:3 frame at 720 x 480 resolution, and the only way I've found to force AutoGK to keep that resolution is to set the AR override to "Original".

Didn't you say before that only the DAR was incorrect? Because "anamorphic 16:9 in a 4:3 frame at 720 x 480" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Not to me anyway. Maybe post a pic of the 720x480 image, maybe a frame with something round in it, like a sun, or some people, so we can fool around until it looks right.

[JamesC01]

Didn't you say before that only the DAR was incorrect? Because "anamorphic 16:9 in a 4:3 frame at 720 x 480" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Not to me anyway. Maybe post a pic of the 720x480 image, maybe a frame with something round in it, like a sun, or some people, so we can fool around until it looks right.

Actually it makes perfect sense when you understand where it comes from.

The maximum recording resolution of my DVD recorder (and all others, as far as I know) is 720 x 480. That's standard NTSC DVD full resolution. Can't do any better. DVD recorders will only record a standard def signal, i.e., 480i with an assumed 4:3 frame size. If you record this standard def signal at 720 x 480 resolution, it produces an apparent 1.5:1 aspect ratio. But standard DVD format deals with that by setting the intended display aspect ratio in the IFO header, e.g., 4:3 or 16:9, which DVD players understand and use on playback.

When recording any source program, you naturally want to use the full resolution of which your recorder is capable, without wasting any. The best way to do this when recording a 16:9 wide-screen source program is to set the source for anamorphic output, squeezing the 16:9 image horizontally into the 4:3 frame so that it exactly fills the frame. That produces a 720 x 480 recording which is apparently 1.5:1 aspect ratio, but intended to be displayed at 16:9. That works fine for DVD players as long as the 16:9 DAR flag is set in the IFO file.

Having recorded at 720 x 480, you don't want to throw away any of that resolution when you make an avi file from it. You could downsize to 720 x 416 to get a true 16:9 aspect ratio, but you'd be throwing away 13% of the vertical resolution. Or you could upsize to 854 x 480 to get the 16:9 aspect ratio without losing resolution, but many DVD players that play DivX/XVid avi files won't accept horizontal resolutions > 720, including mine.

So, the best compromise is to keep the avi file at 720 x 480, as long as your DVD player and TV will display that correctly at 16:9, which mine will.

When the avi file is played by most media players on the computer, it looks like 720 x 480 (i.e., 1.5:1 aspect ratio), with no black bars on any side, but people and objects looking slightly squished horizontally in the picture because the original source was 16:9. If I had primarily intended the avi files to be played on my computer instead of on my TV, I might instead have downsized to 720 x 416.

[jagabo]

I notice that although I can set the DAR in the MPEG4 stream to 16:9 using XVid or MPEG4Modifier, the effect is to calculate and set the pixel AR appropriately to produce the desired DAR when multiplied by the pixels:lines ratio. In other words, there is no desired DAR stored in the MPEG4 data, only a pixel AR.

Generally

DAR = PAR * SAR

There'e no reason to explicitly store both the PAR and the DAR, it would be redudant.

Actually, the 4:3 or 16:9 picture on a DVD is stored in the center 704x480 part of the 720x480 frame. So indicating the PAR is more accurate than indicating the DAR. The PAR will always get you the right size picture, regardless of the padding. I suspect this is why Divx and Xvid decided to only record the pAR.

[manono]

Actually it makes perfect sense when you understand where it comes from.

No it doesn't. You have an incorrect DAR set in the file. That's all. It's 4:3 where it should be 16:9. If you want to make a 1:1 AVI (which you don't), override the 4:3 setting in the Hidden Options of AutoGK. "anamorphic 16:9 in a 4:3 frame at 720 x 480" still makes no sense. It's only the DAR that's set wrongly. The "frame" (720x480) stays the same regardless.

So, the best compromise is to keep the avi file at 720 x 480, as long as your DVD player and TV will display that correctly at 16:9, which mine will.

My guess is that your player is defective. It's not reading any DAR or PAR information in the headers, but just stretching everything to fill your widescreen TV set. What happens when you have a 1.33:1 ratio AVI, such as 640x480 or 512x384? Does it also stretch those to fill the screen, so that everyone looks short and fat? What about when you have a 2.35:1 ratio AVI, such as 640x272? Does it stretch everything vertically to fill the screen, so that everyone looks tall and thin? Sounds like an ESS chipset player. I could be wrong, but if I'm right, then you don't have much choice but to continue doing as you're doing. Until you get a newer and better player, at which point all your 720x480 AVIs will suddenly begin playing with the wrong aspect ratio.

[jagabo]

The current Philips Divx/DVD players respect Divx/Xvid PAR/DAR settings.

[manono]

Rereading the thread, I see where you said that already on the first page. Sorry, I forgot, and thanks for the reminder. If JamesC01 has one of those players, then some of my last post is incorrect. I remember a heck of a lot of people complaining in the past that their widescreen TV sets were playing stretched out 1:1 AVIs when using DVD/MPEG-4 players that used ESS chipsets. About the only fix then was to encode at the original 1.5:1 ratio (if the DVD was 16:9) and let the players stretch it into the correct AR. But more standard 1:1 AVIs all played with bad AR unless they were already roughly 1.78:1 or 1.85:1, as a 624x352 AVI is.

[JamesC01]

Whatever. I'm happy now that it's doing what I want, and I think I understand sufficiently well how it all works.

It can be a bit difficult to figure out exactly what's going between the DVD player and the TV, but as long as the end result is a 16:9 full-screen picture with every pixel of detail originally recorded, it doesn't matter. It serves my purpose.

[richlux]

This might explain the "problem" i've been having. I have a widescreen Mini-DVD camcorder. When I play the DVD from the camcorder on the computer, it plays as a 16:9 video. HOWEVER, no matter what program I use to edit the VOB files (and I've tried tons), it always imports the VOB and shows it on the computer as 4:3 with everything slightly squashed together.

From what I'm reading, if I burn the edited footage back to a DVD, it will play back as a 16:9 video again?

Thanks,
Rich

[jagabo]

Both 4:3 and 16:9 MPEG use the same frame size, 720x480. There is a flag in the MPEG data that tells the player whether it should be displayed as 4:3 or 16:9. If that flag is maintained through your editing and authoring the video will play with the right aspect ratio.

[richlux]

Thanks, I didn't realize that... I wonder why video editing software doesn't pick that up. I've literally tried all the commercial software and some of the freeware. I even tried manually telling the software that the aspect ratio is 16:9 when I import the VOB file, but that just gives me black bars on the side of the same squished image.

Rich

[jagabo]

There will typically be settings for the source aspect ratio and the output aspect ratio. Make sure they are both set to 16:9.

[versionjuan]

I hope it's not too late to quickly help someone who's just encountering this same issue (atleast the problem of the person that started the thread re PAL dvd's decrypted to .vob files and want to convert it to avi with the same qualities.

here's how i would do this:

assuming that you have already decrypted the dvd image and are able to view the .vob files,

use SUPER, select output container: avi, output video codec: mpeg-4, output audio codec: mp3, ffmpeg, choose scale size (i use 720:480 NTSC-DV statndard), aspect ratio 16:9, fps: 29.97, bitrate: 1008 (or your preference but the higher the bitrate the bigger output file), check boxes for hi quality and stretch it. for audio, sampling freq: 44100, channels: 2, bitrate: 128. just drag & drop the .vob file to be encoded in the field below (you can double-click on the .vob file once it's on the field to view the file details), then click encode.

that's it. i've only tried it once but with several .vob files of one whole movie. this is my first post and i'm no expert so anyone feel free to correct me.

[guns1inger]

I hope it's not too late to quickly help someone who's just encountering this same issue (atleast the problem of the person that started the thread re PAL dvd's decrypted to .vob files and want to convert it to avi with the same qualities.

here's how i would do this:

assuming that you have already decrypted the dvd image and are able to view the .vob files,

use SUPER, select output container: avi, output video codec: mpeg-4, output audio codec: mp3, ffmpeg, choose scale size (i use 720:480 NTSC-DV statndard), aspect ratio 16:9, fps: 29.97, bitrate: 1008 (or your preference but the higher the bitrate the bigger output file), check boxes for hi quality and stretch it. for audio, sampling freq: 44100, channels: 2, bitrate: 128. just drag & drop the .vob file to be encoded in the field below (you can double-click on the .vob file once it's on the field to view the file details), then click encode.

that's it. i've only tried it once but with several .vob files of one whole movie. this is my first post and i'm no expert so anyone feel free to correct me.

SUPER is OK for quick and dirty conversions, but the quality of it's presets is pretty low in comparison to most other tools.

If the source is NTSC 23.976 fps then you should encode your output at 23.976, not 29.970 fps.

For the best comptaibility you should forego the AR flag and resize for a 1:1 PAR when encoding to Xvid/Divx or similar. Too many players simply won't read it correctly otherwise.

[versionjuan]

i really wasn't sure about the aspect ratio part so thanks for the heads up. you're right, there is some loss of quality but i'd still recommend SUPER for beginners atleast coz i didn't have any trouble figuring out how to use it as a beginner in video editing myself. can't really ask for too much from free software.

[udaykhan]

I can see the posts stopped back in january but i have a suggestion....when u have an original DVD as the source, and u want to back it up, why don't u simply do a DVD copy to a single blank DVD as is? are you trying to rip it to 700 MB or 1.4 GB and save 2/3rd of a DVD disk and burn more stuff on it? single layer DVDs are dirt cheap in most places, so what is it that you are trying to save? of course i love divx / xvid for their ability to compress and still preserve quality to a large extent but if I have an original DVD, i wouldn't take the pains to do all this. i'd simply do a DVD copy.

[shoeshine]

wow this lady is hot, can i get a date?