How does video play resolution differ?

[toycar]

Some video files' resolution differs from play resolution (as on the attachment), I don't understand how? Some ripper I follow uses this trick; the TV channel broadcasts a 16:9 video in 4:3 format, he rips it in 4:3 so black bars exist above and below but then just changes the play resolution; so video res. increases but black bars gone.. How is it done?

[aedipuss]

read up on PAR DAR and SAR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio

[Cornucopia]

Remember, that is "Windows" giving you those figures in that screencap. So all bets are off.
Use a GOOD tool to tell you truly what the media info is...like for example, MediaInfo!

Scott

[jagabo]

For example, 4:3 DVD and 16:9 DVD both use a 720x480 frame size. The player adjust the size at playback.

[yoda313]

To add to the confusion read these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widescreen

I should brush up on these myself. I know about the pillar bars and all that but a refresher never hurts.

[jagabo]

It's very simple: the video is stored with a frame size measured in pixels, 544x368 in the OP's post. Within the file there are instruction that tell the player how the video should be displayed. Different codecs and different containers vary in the way they do that. In the OP's post the instructions say to display the image as 540x405, a 4:3 aspect ratio. If a player uses a different size, to play the video full screen for example, it will use that 4:3 aspect ratio to resize. So on a 1920x1080 screen it will be resized to 1440x1080 (4:3) and pillarbox bars added to the sides to fill out the 1920x1080 screen.

[Cornucopia]

I would amend this to say: however, the instructions might say to display the image with a 4:3 Display Aspect ratio, and the player(s) decides whether to 1) ignore this - keeping it at 544x368, 2) Keep the horizontal dimension and resize the vertical - making it ~540x405, or 3) Keep the vertical dimension and resize the horizontal - making it ~490x368. Which is why there is confusion.
Then add fullscreen playback on top of that...

Scott