Different AR on IMDb and DVD-cover

[tominator]

Hi
I want to backup the movie Carolina from my PAL-DVD. The back of the DVD-cover says 1,33:1 but IMDb says 1,85:1. Could the back of the cover be wrong?

Since the movie is from 2003 it makes me even more doubtful that the movie would be 1,33:1.

I havn't yet understood the whole AR thing completely, can one movie be released with two different ARs? I thought they shot the movie in one AR and changing it would make the video look strange. Could someone please explain this to me?

To gain some extra information on this matter I checked www.nforce.nl for any scene releases made of this movie which only made me even more confused. I didn't download the movies of course (since that would be illegal where I live and nforce doesnt actually host any movies) but what I did do is read their NFOs. It actually looks like there has been both fullscreen- and widescreenreleases of this movie.

Could someone please make me less confused about this?

[guns1inger]

I have seen covers with incorrect information before. It happens for various reasons, from simple poor research, to last minute changes during authoring. It is also not unusual, even in these so-called enlightened times, for pans and scan versions to be created and released for people who simply do not understand why we have black bars. This doesn't exactly answer you question, but hopefully explains why there is a discrepancy.

[tominator]

Lets say that the AR actually is 1,85:1 and that the file I've got on my harddrive just plays back at the wrong AR. How would I know if I can't see that faces are streched and such?

I have a few other movies where I know that the AR is like 2,35:1 but they still playback at 4:3. Why is this? Does it have anything to do with "anamorphic DVDs"? And more importantly, what is the most commonly used procedure in reencoding them to the correct AR? My encoding software (Procoder 3) just cuts the top and bottom off if I specify a wider aspect when the source plays back at 4:3.

[manono]

Hi-

Lets say that the AR actually is 1,85:1 and that the file I've got on my harddrive just plays back at the wrong AR.

The film was shown in the theaters as 1.85:1, but your DVD is Pan-And-Scan 1.33:1. And probably the only one in the world that's cropped. The US R1 DVD is anamorphic 16:9 and 1.85:1. The German R2 PAL DVD is anamorphic 16:9 and 1.85:1. You can read these reviews for confirmation, can't you, of how bad the Scandanavian DVD is?

http://www.component.se/dvdreview.php?eanupc=5706112354561
http://www.dvdforum.nu/?upc=706112354561

It's so rare as not to be worth mentioning for a movie on DVD not to play with the correct AR - to play stretched or squashed. Pan-And-Scan versions of widescreen movies are, unfortunately, not all that rare.

I have a few other movies where I know that the AR is like 2,35:1 but they still playback at 4:3. Why is this? Does it have anything to do with "anamorphic DVDs"?

That question is a little unclear to me. It's also not uncommon for a widescreen movie to be encoded as 4:3. A 1.85:1 movie can be encoded as both 16:9 and as 4:3 and still be uncropped and still play as widescreen. Naturally enough, for better picture quality, especially when being viewed on widescreen TV sets, it's much preferred for widescreen movies to be encoded as 16:9 (aka anamorphic). There's more information about that at the Digital Bits Anamorphic site:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/anamorphic185demo.html

And more importantly, what is the most commonly used procedure in reencoding them to the correct AR?

That particular DVD is already at the correct AR - in the sense that it's not stretched or squashed. Since it's no longer widescreen, nothing you can do can bring back the original picture. However, widescreen 4:3 movies on DVD can be reencoded for 16:9 by cropping off most of the black bars above and below the picture and resizing for (in your case) 720x576. It's debatable just how worthy a project that is. What you're describing as Procoder 3's method is what's done when converting widescreen 4:3 to 16:9. It's pretty pointless to do that to a Panned-And-Scanned movie bacause, as you discovered already, you'll just lose more of the picture. You've already lost picture on the left and right, and by converting it to 16:9 you then lose additional picture off the top and bottom.

My advice is, if you like the movie buy either the German or US versions of it on DVD.

[jagabo]

I have a few other movies where I know that the AR is like 2,35:1 but they still playback at 4:3. Why is this?

Maybe the software you're using isn't using the Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) flag that tells the player whether to display the video as 4:3 or 16:9. If the player is ignoring the DAR flags it is probably displaying the frame with square pixels. A 720x576 frame displayed this way would have a DAR of 5:4.

DVD only supports two DARs: 4:3 and 16:9. Any film that isn't one of those ratios will have black bars added to fill out the frame. For example, a 2.35:1 movie on a 16:9 DVD will have about 720x432 of active picture with 72 lines of black border added to the top and bottom. On a 4:3 encoded DVD it will have about 720x326 of active picture with 125 line black bars at the top and bottom.