Weird problem with default aspet ratio...

[toothaction]

I recently picked up a bootleg disc containing about 3 hours worth of the Japanese program Chibira-kun. It's from 1970 so should obviously have a 4:3 aspect ratio -


But my DVD player will only recognize it as 16:9 -


And VLC plays the default at whatever this is, 0.733:1?


I know that I can just set the AR playback on VLC, but I was considering sharing it with friends and wanted to make sure that it automatically plays in the correct frame.

I did a little bit of reading on how to do this and grabbed DVDPatcher to try it out, but the program was seeing the files as 4:3 already. I used a "What Is My DVD?" tool here and got the same result -

VTS_01 specifications
Attributes: MPEG-2 352x480 (NTSC) (4:3)
# of title play maps: 1
Number of PGCs: 1
Longest Program Chain #: 1

I used VLC to record a small bit of video from the disc and the snippet had the same weird default ratio of taller than wide.

Can anyone explain to me what's going on with the floating ratio and maybe how I can fix it? Unfortunately I don't have the funds to buy any software so I'd need to perform the fix(es) with freeware.

Also, is there an easy way to reset and customize chapter breaks? The disc is menu-less and broken into three title set of 1h6m each. Between those there are only 11 chapters, but each title set is actually comprised of six 11 minute episodes and I'd like to be able to easily skip from one to the next.

Any direct help or even pointing me to the right old thread(s) would be greatly appreciated.

[poisondeathray]

RE: AR problems - What does gspot say ?

I'm guessing it might have something to do with the wrong sequence display extension

Restream might be able to fix it (on elementary video, you would have to remux it)

[manono]

I'm guessing it might have something to do with the wrong sequence display extension

Either that or the DVD player or TV set is set up incorrectly. Since you have a widescreen TV set make sure the player is set up to output to a 16:9 or widescreen TV set (or for 'Squeeze' if it's an Oppo). The TV set may itself be set up wrong and what it should be depends on how it names its aspect ratios. For my Sony it's 'Normal'.

[toothaction]

It's not my TV or player, this behavior is entirely unique to this particular disc. Just grabbed Gspot, now to figure out how to use it!

[DB83]

It's not my TV or player, this behavior is entirely unique to this particular disc. Just grabbed Gspot, now to figure out how to use it!

Argue as you will but one (or both)are set up wrong

The disk uses what is commonly known as half-d1 or 352*480 which is why you see this squashed image. The 4:3 DAR should correct this.

If a player is showing 16:9 then the settings for that player are wrong - typically to stretch the 4:3 image to fit a 16:9 screen. You can not set that withing the dvd authoring process which must either be 4:3 or 16:9. With 16:9 you have other options of how that can be displayed on a 4:3 screen.

You can also load one of the dvd's vobs in to mediainfo which will tell you are DAR that is set for this dvd

[toothaction]

I wasn't meaning to be argumentative, I was just stating that in my experience with playing hundreds of different chunks 'o media, from Discs of VOBS to discs of rips to files on USB to downloads of many different codecs I've never encountered this behavior before. I will check mediainfo, thank you.

[Cornucopia]

I agree with the above posts: you've got 1/2 D1 encoded video, with either the wrong sequence display extension info encoded, or your player(s) are not correctly reading/adjusting to the SDE code.

Take the disc to somebody else's known-good PC and/or settop player setup (maybe a reputable video store, but probably NOT BestBuy, etc) and compare. Whether it is CIF (aka 352x240 MPEG1), or 1/2D1 (aka 352x480 MPEG2) or full D1 (aka 704x480, 720x480 MPEG2), ALL of them should display as 4:3 correctly.

Where are those test discs when you need them?!

Scott