How to stop my Sony Blu-Ray Player from stretching MKV files to 16:9?

[alfields326]

I have a Sony Blu-Ray player, BDV E780W and I use the USB port to hook up to an external hard drive with video files.

The MKV files on the hard drive are 1280x536 so they should have black bars at the top and bottom when watching on my 16:9 TV. However, the player keeps stretching the MKV files so they fill the screen at 16:9.

Is there a way to stop this? I would like to set up the player to play the files correctly, but I have tried messing with the settings on the player and can't get it to work. I'm wondering if there is something I can do to the MKV files instead.

Thanks for the help!

[poisondeathray]

you add the borders back, so its 1280x720

e.g. uncropmkv , multiavchd

[Noahtuck]

When I have that problem, I will run them through mkvmerge GUI and manually set the aspect ratio.

It takes a few minutes to process but it is not re-encoding anything, just rewriting the header info.

No need to add black borders or re-encode.

[poisondeathray]

It's worth trying Noahtuck's suggestion first (it's a lot faster, no quality loss)

But remuxing to set the DAR doesn't work for some earlier generation BD players, and the newest BD players don't seem to care if BD's are cropped or not

[addu]

Just check ur bluray player setting whether it is kept as 16:9 keep aspect ratio or 16:9 full screen. Adjust it accordingly.

[alfields326]

Noahtuck...your suggestion worked perfectly! Thank you so much!!! And you too poisondeathray for providing a backup plan! Gotta love the power of the internet (and helpful posters) to solve your problems!!!

[Noahtuck]

Just check ur bluray player setting whether it is kept as 16:9 keep aspect ratio or 16:9 full screen. Adjust it accordingly.

Yeah, that does not always work.

I have 2 - LG BD610 Blu-Ray players that are at least a year and half old and when I have that problem, I do what I posted and it works every time, where as no matter what I set the player to, it does not.

[hello_hello]

I'm not saying it doesn't/didn't work, as obviously it does, but if I understand the problem and solution, the Bluray player must make odd assumptions regarding the aspect ratio to begin with. Normally a video with a resolution such as 1280x536 would have square pixels and be displayed accordingly (with black bars), so either the player is just assuming it's supposed to be 16:9 for some reason or the aspect ratio in the MKV files is set to 16:9 and therefore wrong to begin with.

I have a Sony Bluray player and it displays the aspect ratio of video such as 1280x536 correctly, as does the media player in the TV. I wonder if it could be the TV causing the problem rather than the player? The TV might have a 16:9 mode which is causing it to stretch the video to fill the screen, although given setting the aspect ratio in the file fixes the problem, you'd assume the player is getting it wrong.
I have my player set to always upscale to 1080p and the video is always displayed correctly regardless of the resolution. I might have a play with it later to see if I can get it to display incorrectly too. There must be a reason why it's happening.

[Noahtuck]

All I can say is, when I have 5 .MKV's that display correctly, then 5 that do NOT display correctly, regardless of what settings I choose on my Blu-Ray player or any of my 1080p LCD/LED tv's, yet they will correctly display AFTER I run them through mkvmerge GUI.....

It's pretty obvious it is a problem with the .MKV file.

[hello_hello]

All I can say is, when I have 5 .MKV's that display correctly, then 5 that do NOT display correctly, regardless of what settings I choose on my Blu-Ray player or any of my 1080p LCD/LED tv's, yet they will correctly display AFTER I run them through mkvmerge GUI.....

It's pretty obvious it is a problem with the .MKV file.

It probably is if some display correctly while others don't. I wouldn't argue with that. It'd just be interesting to know why.
I checked a few MKVs using MKVMergeGUI's header editor and the video display width and height elements were the same as the resolution. Those MKVs were all muxed using MKVMergeGUI so maybe other muxers don't always include them if the video uses square pixels? I'm just guessing, but according to the header editor, the display width and height elements aren't compulsory, so it can remove them.

I just have a theory that if the display elements are missing, the player may assume 16:9 regardless of the resolution, or it'll resize it to whatever the output aspect ratio might be, which would mostly be 16:9. It'd be a fairly dumb assumption in my opinion, but anything's possible, and at least it's a logical explanation for why remuxing fixes the problem..... even if it turns out not to be correct.

Do you happen to have a "before" and "after" MKV handy? One which didn't display correctly originally but the re-muxed version does? If so, could you open them with MKVMergeGUI's header editor (from the File menu) and take a peak at the display width and height elements to see if they're different after the video has been remuxed?

Another thought..... when you remux the MKV while setting an aspect ratio, does it also fix the problem if you set the display width and height to the same as the resolution (rather than use 2.35 or 2.40 etc)? If it does, it'd probably be a more accurate way to set the aspect ratio, as the resolution is rarely likely to be exactly 2.35 or 2.40 etc.
As far as I know, the aspect ratio is always "translated" to a display width and height to be stored as MKV elements anyway. So for example, remuxing a 1280x720 MKV while specifying a 16:9 aspect ratio will probably result in the display elements being written as 1280 and 720, therefore it wouldn't matter which way you do it.

PS There's also another apsect ratio element which might be worth looking at, although I don't fully understand what it does. It's the "video aspect ratio type" element. According to the header editor, the possible values are "0" (free resizing), "1" (keep aspect ratio) and "2" (fixed). I couldn't find an MKV which has the element set to any value, but it seems it tells the player what to do when resizing the video and/or whether it's allowed to resize it at all. Even if it's set though, there's probably no gaurantee a player would pay any attention to it, but it's still worth checking.