DAR won´t change.

[vidqual]

Hi guys,

I have a couple of questions.

MeGUI doesn´t let me change the DAR if I don´t select Resize. Is this normal?
How can I change the DAR of a video here if I don´t want to resize?

The source video is a NTSC DVD (720 x 480). If I check Resize, I can change
to whatever DAR I want in AVISynth script creator´s Input DAR tab, BUT if I
don´t check Resize because I want the output video to be the same size as
the original BUT with a PAL 4:3 DAR, it won´t change the DAR, the Preview
window doesn´t change. It won´t change either if I change to any other DAR
when Resize is not checked.

What can I do to change the DAR? StaxRip lets me change it, so I guess it
could be done in MeGUI too...

I want to change the DAR because VLC plays back NTSC DVDs with a 4:3 DAR,
(I don´t know the reason why) but the DAR shown in MeGUI´s Preview is wider,
it looks stretched, and I don´t want this.

The other question is: Is it possible in MeGUI to cut the audio when cutting video?
I haven´t found out how to do it... apparently you have to do it afterwards once
saved a cut file with AVS Cutter, and then loading it in Cuts within the Audio tab.
Is there a way to cut both video and audio at the same time?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers.

[Baldrick]

Resize to same size, 720x480, and set the display aspect ratio ?

[vidqual]

Resize to same size, 720x480, and set the display aspect ratio ?

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

If I introduce manually 720 x 480 (in order to be able to do it I have to uncheck first
Suggest Resolution), I get an error: "there is no function named "DGDecode_mpeg2source"
and the Preview doesn´t change.

I don´t know if this problem has anything to do with the default Resize filter used by
MeGUI, Lanczos (Sharp).

Cheers.

[DB83]

The issue is more likely to be your settings in vlc than the dvd itself.

Whether you have a NTSC 720*480 4:3 dvd or a PAL 720*576 4:3 dvd they should both appear unstretched in playback.

[vidqual]

The issue is more likely to be your settings in vlc than the dvd itself.

Whether you have a NTSC 720*480 4:3 dvd or a PAL 720*576 4:3 dvd they should both appear unstretched in playback.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

If I play back the DVD with Media Player Classic, the DAR is the same as with
VLC, 4:3, not stretched. VLC settings in Video/Aspect ratio, is Default, and if
I select here 4:3, the picture doesn´t change. So both players play back
NTSC DVDs and PAL ones fine as 4:3 with no stretching.

DVD playback is not the problem here, it´s MeGUI not letting me change
the DAR if no resize is applied. If I resize the video, DAR changes work
fine.

StaxRip does it with no problem: I can set the size as the original DVD size,
no resizing, and then change the DAR to PAL 4:3. The resultant video file
displays a 4:3 DAR with all players.

And, yes, I could use StaxRip, but I stopped using it because the latest
versions are too slow when encoding the second pass, so I´m giving a
try to MeGUI.

I hope someone knows how to fix this little issue... If StaxRip can do it,
MeGUI should do it too!

Cheers.

[DB83]

I have to ask this.

If it plays ok then why do you want to change it ?

[vidqual]

I have to ask this.

If it plays ok then why do you want to change it ?

Hi,

Sorry if I didn't express myself correctly, but, what plays OK? The original
DVD plays OK; what doesn´t is the conversion. The resultant video after
encoding with MeGUI (AVISynth: 720 x 480 resolution, NOT resized, DAR
PAL 4:3) plays stretched in VLC, MPC or any other player. This is not OK for
me... That´s why I want to change its DAR to PAL 4:3, so I don´t have to
bother changing the aspect ratio to 4:3 in the player every time I want to
play it back.

Cheers.

[DB83]

Not familar with MeGUI but....

720*480 is not 4:3 when you have square pixels. The encoding creates square pixels so you end up with a 3:2 video and hence the need to manually alter it it 4:3.

If there is a setting in MeGUi for the PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) then you can create a 720*480 video with non-square pixels.

Otherwise, yes, you must resize to a formal 4:3 size such as 640*480 or 720*540.

Now I will leave it from here to someone with more knowledge of MeGUi. What I quote is basic standards.

[vidqual]

Not familar with MeGUI but....

720*480 is not 4:3 when you have square pixels. The encoding creates square pixels so you end up with a 3:2 video and hence the need to manually alter it it 4:3.

If there is a setting in MeGUi for the PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) then you can create a 720*480 video with non-square pixels.

Otherwise, yes, you must resize to a formal 4:3 size such as 640*480 or 720*540.

Now I will leave it from here to someone with more knowledge of MeGUi. What I quote is basic standards.

Hi,

Well, what I know is that the players show the NTSC DVDs less "stretched", as
wide as the PAL ones (perhaps this is just my perception, and they are not
exactly as wide as the PAL ones, but very close), BUT video editors do show
them clearly wider. Therefore, I tend to think that what players show by
default is the correct size because I´m used to see them like that... perhaps
this is wrong for whatever reason.

Now, since NTSC DVDs looked to me stretched when opened in the video editor´s
Preview (StaxRip, MeGUI...), that´s why I tried the DAR feature, and the PAL 4:3
one always looked like the right picture to me...

And, as I said, StaxRip works fine when changing the DAR without resizing the
original video, so that´s what I want in MeGUI too. I just checked VLC´s Codec
info´s resolution of a test clip of this same NTSC DVD done with StaxRip
(720x480, PAL 4:3 DAR), and it says 720x480 (this must be the real size of the
file), and when played back it appears like 4:3 (not stretched), what I wanted.

So, why do players show these NTSC DVDs like 4:3, or rather not as "stretched"
or wide like they appear in video editors?

Now I´m wondering what to do... if applying the DAR feature, or leave the video
alone... Why should I change the DAR from NTSC to PAL in the first place? Do
people change it?

I´ll have a look at that PAR thing.

Thanks for your time.

Cheers.

[Cornucopia]

Whether NTSC 720x480 or PAL 720x576, if you are seeing PROPERLY-ENCODED MPEG2 assets in an editor at anything but their correct standard DARs (4:3 or 16:9), either your editor is faulty in displaying things, or you have it set up incorrectly.

I can easily verify: a 4:3 NTSC 720x480 and 4:3 PAL 720x576 image displayed side-by-side on ~identical monitors should have the SAME screen size and AR (the PAL image should look slightly sharper, however, but with less smooth motion).

Well-written, proper players & editors should be correctly taking into account the Aspect Ratios of whatever footage given them (within expected standards).

Scott

<edit>BTW, DB83, I can tell you from experience, it is NOT a good thing to resize 720x480 to 720x540 (and vice-versa), particularly WRT interlaced footage! While the horizontal pixel scanning has always been interpolated & fudged, the scanline rows are DISCREET and should remain unchanged if at all possible.

[DB83]

@ Scott

Quite happy to take your word for that. Have no experience of dealing with NTSC sources but when I rwsize with PAL to 720*540 (IIRC autogk does it at 720*544) there are no issues. But then my eyes could well deceive me.

[Cornucopia]

If you're doing PAL (well, that would make sense being in UK), why aren't you going to 768x576? That would be the correct 4:3 equivalent with 1:1 PAR (aka square pixels).

Scott

[DB83]

If you're doing PAL (well, that would make sense being in UK), why aren't you going to 768x576? That would be the correct 4:3 equivalent with 1:1 PAR (aka square pixels).

Scott

Of course you are correct. I do so little resize/re-encoding - most of my captures go straight to dvd - that I give it little technical thought.

One clarification though. While it is logical to keep the vertical resolution when both input and output are interlaced, autogk, as my tool of choice, gives me a progressive output at 720*544 (from 720*576) and while interlaced is always prefered I would have thought in this scenario that progressive gives a cleaner picture ?

[Cornucopia]

I try to look at it logically: Are you trying to resize because of size restrictions? or to fix the DAR for square pixels?

Either way, you want follow the "do as little harm as possible" rule, regardless. So if you can, you resize in ONLY ONE dimension, not both.

For the latter above reasoning (AR adjustment), the dimension to resize is the dimension that is already somewhat compromised (horizontal). No need to compromise the vertical as well, right? Thus, leave the 576 alone and resize the 720 -> 768! What I said about interlaced is only because of the fact that interlace just compounds and exaggerates the problem, but it still holds true for progressive files as well.

Scott

[hello_hello]

On MeGUI and DVD aspect ratios:
Once the script creator window is open and you're setting up an encode, simply enable anamorphic encoding if you don't want to resize to square pixels. Whether you resize or not, MeGUI will then add aspect ratio goodness to the Script tab. If you don't crop, the Input DAR and the aspect ratio in the script tab should be one and the same.

If you don't check anamorphic encoding, MeGUI will resize the DVD to square pixel dimensions (like AutoGK does). It doesn't add aspect ratio stuff to the script tab with anamorphic encoding disabled. MeGUI won't resize "up" by default so the maximum DVD width would probably be 720 pixels. The AVISynth Profile configuration button takes you to settings which include enabling resizing up, so you could then resize to 768x576 or 1024x576 etc if you want to.

Where it can get a little confusing is some of the anamorphic encoding methods also resize, but if anamorphic encoding is enabled then MeGUI will set the correct aspect ratio whether you resize or not. Without anamorphic encoding you're resizing to square pixels. Don't manually change the Input DAR unless you know for sure MeGUI is getting it wrong, which hardly ever happens.

When setting up an encode, the preview window displays the video as though it uses square pixels even if you use anamorphic encoding, so DVD aspect ratios will look wrong when setting up an anamorphic encode (for example a 720x576 DVD will display with an aspect ratio of 720x576 in the preview window instead of 16:9 or 4:3). It's nothing to worry about though, it'll still be encoded using the correct aspect ratio. When you load the script for encoding the second preview window has a checkbox for displaying the video using the correct aspect ratio.

You do effectively cut the video and audio at the same time if you're adding cuts to the script with the AVS cutter. When you're done adding cuts, select "do all" and MeGUI will save a cuts file when it writes the cuts to the script. Load the cuts file into the audio section and it'll be encoded using the same edits as the video. If you don't want to re-encode the audio, the audio cutter under the Tools menu will load the same cuts file, then split and rejoin the audio without re-encoding it. You can then add the "edited" audio to the output MKV/MP4 etc.
The AVS Cutter doesn't actually cut the video, it simply tells AVISynth which parts of it you want to encode, and the audio is then re-encoded/cut in the same way using the cuts file.

If you're after quality de-interlacing, you can't go past QTGMC. Once you've put the required plugins in the AVISynth plugins folder, manually adding QTGMC to the script is pretty easy. As usual you need to de-interlace before resizing. It's also a good denoiser. If I need to de-interlace I always use QTGMC these days and I generally use the default mode which will de-interlace 25fps interlaced to 50fps progressive. QTGMC can be very slow, especially if you're not using a multi-threaded version of AVISynth. I get around that by running two encodes simultaneously to keep the CPU busy. QTGMC is however, much better than any other "full frame rate" de-interlacing method I've tried. Once you've de-interlaced to "full frame rate" I doubt you'll go back. Motion is much smoother than de-interlacing to 25fps progressive. If QTGMC is too slow, MeGUI has a few full frame rate de-interlacing options. Yadif (with Bob) does a reasonably good job but it's not as good as QTGMC. It is fast though.

[hello_hello]

PS I used to use anamorphic encoding for DVDs myself, but a couple of media players built into TVs which think all video has square pixels caused me to re-think that one. Now I always resize DVDs "up" to square pixel dimensions instead of using anamorphic encoding. I do it by cropping first, then I resize the video height to match the remaining picture height. ie if the video is 576 pixels high and I crop 12 of them, I use 564 as the height when resizing. I then increase the resize width until the aspect ratio distortion is as close to zero as I can get it. If you don't crop anything from the width, that'd be around 1024 for a PAL DVD (depending on whether you use ITU input DAR/resizing or not).

[vidqual]

Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for your input!

I´ve been doing some tests with MeGUI, and these are my findings:

I thought that x264´s CLI could overwrite MeGUI´s GUI "bug" to accept
DAR changes with no-resized videos, so I introduced the parameter
"--sar 16:15" in it, but this didn´t work... I checked the log to see if the
parameter was used, and yes, it was there.

What´s wrong now? x264´s fault, or MeGUI again?

Then I encoded a resized video with a 16:9 DAR to see if this same parameter
could overwrite this DAR. It didn´t work either... So, who´s to blame here?

Lastly, I tried the Clever anamorphic method mentioned by hello_hello, and it
worked! The resultant encoded video has a 4:3 PAL DAR with a resolution of
720x480, the source size, as I wanted. The Preview window couldn´t show this
DAR though. But, as he says, is this a good solution if you´re going to play back
the video in TV sets or any other devices?

So no DAR changes allowed in MeGUI if no resizing, unless you use Clever
anamorphic encoding? Is this a bug in MeGUI? StaxRip can do it. Does
perhaps StaxRip use this anamorphic "method"?

Another thing I don´t like is that you cannot resize up the video, but you can
do it manually editing the script, changing the height and width like this:

LanczosResize(720,576) # Lanczos (Sharp)

Is there a way to edit the DAR within the script?

Cheers.

[hello_hello]

You can change the DAR of encoded video if you're using MeGUIs anamorphic encoding without resizing. If you're encoding a 4:3 DVD and for some reason MeGUI thinks it's 16:9 (for example), change the Input DAR to 4:3 and MeGUI will treat it as 4:3.

I've never set the aspect ratio using the x264 encoder configuration so I'm not sure exactly what happens if you do. Chances are it only writes the aspect ratio to the video stream and some players look for the aspect ratio written to the container instead. There's no way to change the "stream" aspect ratio simply by remuxing. I don't know what happens if you manually set the DAR using the encoder configuration and MeGUI sets a different one because you're using anamorphic encoding. Not setting the aspect ratio in the encoder configuration is probably the best idea.

The bottom line is, don't stress too much and let MeGUI do the thinking for you when it comes to aspect ratios and resizing. It pretty much always gets it right. If you want an anamorphic encode, enable the anamorphic option. If you want to resize to square pixels, don't enable it. If there's an odd occasion where for some reason you want to change the output aspect ratio..... do it by telling MeGUI the correct Input DAR to use instead. By changing the Input DAR in the script creator, you'll get MeGUI to calculate the resizing or anamorphic aspect ratio using the Input DAR you specified, which should in turn give you the output aspect ratio you're wanting.

I explained where to find the option to enable resizing "up" in my previous post. Look for the Config button next to the AVISynth profile dropdown box in the script creator. It's in there. It should be enabled by default, but.... it isn't.

On anamorphic encoding..... most GUIs have some sort of option to use anamorphic encoding and also resize the video, although they tend to describe it differently. Some GUIs resize anamorphic encodes a little by default. MeGUI has one anamorphic option which also resizes. Without going into the history of why they can do it, as a general rule the whole point of anamorphic encoding is not to resize the video. You encode it "as-is" without changing the number of the pixels (resizing). Cropping the video will change the display aspect ratio, but when using anamorphic encoding, resizing doesn't (or it shouldn't).
As an example, if you crop a 4:3 PAL DVD a little, say 6 pixels from the top and bottom, it can't have a 4:3 aspect ratio any more as you've removed some of the picture. It's new aspect ratio will be roughly 1.362:1 (instead of 1.333:1). You can resize what's left back to 720x576 if you want to, you can resize it to 800x200...... you could even resize it to 600x2010 if it floats your boat, but the only display aspect ratio which can be used in order not to distort the picture is 1.362:1. As a result, unless you know you need to resize when using anamorphic encoding for some reason, just encode what's left after cropping without resizing. If you crop a PAL 4:3 DVD to 712x562, encode it using a 712x562 resolution. If you want the output display aspect ratio to be exactly 4:3, you need to adjust the cropping accordingly (crop a little extra if need be) until the remaining picture has a 4:3 aspect ratio again.
In the case of MeGUI, the "encode non mod16" anamorphic option is the one which just encodes the remaining video "as-is" after cropping. It doesn't try to adjust the cropping and it won't let you resize.

Another thing I don´t like is that you cannot resize up the video, but you can
do it manually editing the script, changing the height and width like this:

LanczosResize(720,576) # Lanczos (Sharp)

Is there a way to edit the DAR within the script?

Cheers.

Just trying to make it clear, as the aspect ratio thing can take a little time to get your head around.......
In your above example, 720x576 is the resolution, not the display aspect ratio. The only time the resizing/resolution and the aspect ratio are guaranteed to be the one and the same is if you resize to square pixels, or in other words, if you're not using anamorphic encoding. When you enable anamorphic encoding, 720x576 is the resizing/resolution. The aspect ratio which will be used when encoding is listed up at the top of the script creator tab.

[vidqual]

Hi,

Regarding the DAR changes thing, it´s just a NTSC to PAL conversion issue.
I just want to get a not stretched looking aspect ratio. StaxRip did it easily.
Still learning MeGUI...

I explained where to find the option to enable resizing "up" in my previous post. Look for the Config button next to the AVISynth profile dropdown box in the script creator. It's in there. It should be enabled by default, but.... it isn't.

Sorry, I went the script typing route because I didn´t see that "Upsizing allowed"
option in the GUI.

Thanks once again for your help and time. I really appreciate it.


Cheers.

[hello_hello]

Are you saying you're re-encoding NTSC DVDs using a 720x576 resolution? There's nothing to be gained by doing so.

Re-reading some of your posts I'm still not 100% sure what's happening, but both NTSC and PAL 4:3 DVDs should display using a 4:3 aspect ratio. If, when you open one in an editor it looks stretched, it's because the editor isn't displaying the video using the correct aspect ratio (that's no big deal as long as it displays correctly after it's encoded).

If an NTSC DVD is displayed using the storage aspect ratio rather than the display aspect ratio it'll display with a 1.5:1 aspect ratio (720/480=1.5). If the same thing happens with a PAL DVD it'll display using a 1.25:1 aspect ratio (720/576=1.25). Given both should display as 1.33:1, using the storage aspect ratio instead, a PAL DVD might look less wrong than an NTSC DVD simply because 1.25:1 is closer to 1.33:1 than 1.5:1..... if that makes sense.

So my theory would be if StaxRip was displaying NTSC video less stretched when you resized it to 720x576 it's because it was displaying it as 1.25:1, but it'd still be wrong. Just less wrong. Maybe StaxRip wasn't using anamorphic encoding and was simply resizing to 720x576 square pixels. I'm not sure.....

Anyway, if you happen to use MPC-HC and want to know if anamorphic encoding is working correctly, open a DVD encode with it and use File/Properties. If the video uses square pixels it'll only display the resolution, as it's the same as the display aspect ratio. ie 720x400. If the resolution and the aspect ratio are different, it should display the resolution followed by the aspect ratio in brackets. ie 720x576 (4:3).
MPC-HC will show you the aspect ratio more accurately than MediaInfo, which tends to do a lot of rounding.

[vidqual]

Are you saying you're re-encoding NTSC DVDs using a 720x576 resolution? There's nothing to be gained by doing so.

Re-reading some of your posts I'm still not 100% sure what's happening, but both NTSC and PAL 4:3 DVDs should display using a 4:3 aspect ratio. If, when you open one in an editor it looks stretched, it's because the editor isn't displaying the video using the correct aspect ratio (that's no big deal as long as it displays correctly after it's encoded).

If an NTSC DVD is displayed using the storage aspect ratio rather than the display aspect ratio it'll display with a 1.5:1 aspect ratio (720/480=1.5). If the same thing happens with a PAL DVD it'll display using a 1.25:1 aspect ratio (720/576=1.25). Given both should display as 1.33:1, using the storage aspect ratio instead, a PAL DVD might look less wrong than an NTSC DVD simply because 1.25:1 is closer to 1.33:1 than 1.5:1..... if that makes sense.

So my theory would be if StaxRip was displaying NTSC video less stretched when you resized it to 720x576 it's because it was displaying it as 1.25:1, but it'd still be wrong. Just less wrong. Maybe StaxRip wasn't using anamorphic encoding and was simply resizing to 720x576 square pixels. I'm not sure.....

Anyway, if you happen to use MPC-HC and want to know if anamorphic encoding is working correctly, open a DVD encode with it and use File/Properties. If the video uses square pixels it'll only display the resolution, as it's the same as the display aspect ratio. ie 720x400. If the resolution and the aspect ratio are different, it should display the resolution followed by the aspect ratio in brackets. ie 720x576 (4:3).
MPC-HC will show you the aspect ratio more accurately than MediaInfo, which tends to do a lot of rounding.

Hi,

Yeah yeah... I think I was being misunderstood, but I didn´t want to insist... hehe...
And, I´m sorry if I didn´t express myself correctly with any technical detail, so
let me explain it again:

No, I wasn´t re-encoding NTSC DVDs to PAL using 720x576. As I said in my posts,
I just wanted MeGUI to let me change the DAR (to 4:3 PAL) of the original,
not-resized resolution, 720x480. Since I´m used to StaxRip, and this frontend
lets me do it with no problem, I expected MeGUI to do it too, but it won´t let
you unless (as we know now thanks to you) you use the anamorphic "method".
But why changing the DAR? Because both StaxRip and MeGUI preview the
picture of NTSC DVDs stretched, AND also the encodings (if I don´t change the
DAR to 4:3 PAL) come out stretched when played back in VLC and MCP-HC
(by default, without changing the aspect ratio options in these players).

So, in order to get a natural looking 4:3 picture, I always set a 4:3 PAL DAR flag
in StaxRip. Or, a 16:9 PAL one for widescreen material, of course.

MCP-HC shows the original DVD´s properties correctly (editors do too): 720x480,
60 Hz, 4:3, and plays it back correctly too, not stretched.

I hope all this makes more sense to you now.

Cheers.

[DB83]

I read, and re-read this topic but am still confused by the OP's intent.

He starts with an NTSC dvd and I assume he wants to end up with a 4:3 vid and still with NTSC characteristics.

But why, why, why confuse the whole ball-game with 4:3 PAL ?????

If a vid does not display correctly at playback - who cares how it looks in MEGui - then the flag has not been set. And as I said earlier, you do not keep the video size to 720*480 because that is not 4:3 when you re-encode.

[vidqual]

I read, and re-read this topic but am still confused by the OP's intent.

He starts with an NTSC dvd and I assume he wants to end up with a 4:3 vid and still with NTSC characteristics.

But why, why, why confuse the whole ball-game with 4:3 PAL ?????

If a vid does not display correctly at playback - who cares how it looks in MEGui - then the flag has not been set. And as I said earlier, you do not keep the video size to 720*480 because that is not 4:3 when you re-encode.

Hi DB83,

I´m very sorry if this thing confused you.

If I don´t touch the Input DAR set by MeGUI, and without changing the
original resolution, the encoded video comes out stretched when played
back in VLC and MCP-HC. It only displays right when I set the 4:3 PAL
flag. I did many test clips with all the other DARs available in AVS´ GUI,
but for some reason all looked bad. This is why, and I don´t know why
this happens.

Cheers.

[hello_hello]

I think part of the confusion comes from you referring to the resolution as the display aspect ratio, which aren't necessarily one and the same.

Sorry if I restate the obvious but I'm hoping it'll help put us on the same page......

An NTSC DVD has a 720x480 resolution and the picture is stretched to 4:3 or 16:9 on playback, but if you encoded it "as-is" and set the aspect ratio so the encoded video displays correctly (is also stretched to 4:3 or 16:9), then (cropping aside) it's encoded using the same 720x480 resolution. Technically the resolution is the storage aspect ratio, which is 720x480 or 1.5:1.
There's no need to change the resolution or set the resizing to 720x480. In fact if you set the resizing to the original resolution using MeGUI, it won't bother adding it to the script, because it won't resize anything. In your last couple of posts you seemed to refer to "setting a PAL 4:3 flag" when referring to setting the resolution but maybe also when it comes to enabling anamorphic encoding, which is why I'm not 100% clear on what you mean.

So anyway, in MeGUI's case, to encode the video using the original storage aspect ratio and the correct display aspect ratio you'd not use any resizing and you'd enable anamorphic encoding. All but one of the anamorphic options disables resizing anyway. The 720x480 video will be encoded using the original 720x480 storage aspect ratio, and with anamorphic encoding enabled MeGUI will add the correct display aspect ratio to the script (4:3 or 16:9). While you're previewing the video it'll display using the storage aspect ratio (ie with a 1.5:1 aspect ratio for an NTSC DVD) as the display aspect ratio isn't set until the script is saved, but the preview should display as 1.5:1, and it should look stretched or something's actually wrong. Once you save the script a second preview window will open. It lists the aspect ratio which will be used when encoding (4:3 or 16:9 etc) and has a box to check so the second preview will to resize to the correct display aspect ratio if you find yourself wanting to look at it.
Once the encoding is finished MPC-HC should show 720x480 (4:3) and the video should display correctly.

All of the above applies only to using anamorphic encoding where the storage aspect ratio and the display aspect ratio are two completely different things. With anamorphic encoding disabled MeGUI automatically resizes to square pixel dimensions and then the storage aspect ratio and the display aspect ratio are one and the same.... in the case of a 4:3 NTSC DVD that might be 640x480..... there'll be no display aspect ratio to set while encoding, the preview (once you've hit the "Preview AVS Script" button) will resize the video to 640x480, the video preview will look correct because 640x480 is 4:3 and that's how it'll be encoded.

I just installed StaxRip again and had a play to see if I could work out exactly why you were resizing and/or changing aspect ratios but I'm still lost. StaxRip works the same as MeGUI in principle, only it makes it harder, then tries to confuse you, then it frustrates you because you're confused..... or maybe it's just me.

I think when you've been setting NTSC 4:3 DVD aspect ratios to 4:3 PAL you've been messing with your aspect ratios too much. How they look to you when previewing them I can't explain yet, however if you've been changing the aspect ratio under the PAR setting then you've told StaxRip to treat the DVD as having the wrong aspect ratio. I think instead of it expecting a PAL DVD to be 1.333:1 it'll assume it should be 1.136 if you change it to 4:3 NTSC.... at least that's what StaxRip shows.

StaxRip doesn't have a button to enable/disable anamorphic encoding, it switches modes itself. If you open a DVD and disable the resize and cropping filters then you're using anamorphic encoding. The output will be 720x576 with a 4:3 aspect ratio (for PAL).

The video preview gives StaxRip at least one redeeming feature. When you first open it, the video displays the same way as MeGUI does. Anamorphic video will probably look stretched. Tap the "A" key though, and the preview toggles between using the storage aspect ratio and the correct display aspect ratio. I like that idea.

When you move the resize slider, StaxRip switches to resizing the video to square pixels for you (it automatically switched the resizing to 720x544 in my case. Hold down CTRL while changing the resizing and you're using anamorphic encoding again. As a result it resizes the video differently when using anamorphic encoding, although I'm still trying to get my head around why it resizes to the dimensions it does.

I'm reasonably sure Staxrip was applying it's own (extra) cropping at times while I was messing around but I didn't get as far as trying to work out why and whether I could discourage it from doing so, or maybe I still just don't speak fluent enough StaxRip, but sometimes it seemed to claim I was resizing "up when resizing to a particular resolution, then a little later it wasn't. I guess either the resolution of the video to be encoded after cropping changed itself a few times or I'm an idiot

Unfortunately after playing around with StaxRip a bit I'm still no closer to understand why you were having to change the input aspect ratio or whether you were resizing the video and using anamorphic encoding too etc, and to be honest based on your description of your process, I'm still confused as to how the encoded video displays correctly.

PS, I had a quick look and it appears the StaxRip x264 presets use the default x264 settings along with the appropriate x264 speed preset and tuning, so they seem to be what their names imply they are and don't use exotic x264 settings. The "x264" preset appears to use the x264 defaults. Have you had a chance to compare encoding speed with MeGUI yet?

[DB83]

@hello_hello

That is a good write-up. Explains in the context of the sw what I have been trying to convey without it.

[vidqual]

Hi hello_hello,

Sorry about this confusion, but good to see you installed StaxRip to have a look at it.
All this comes from the fact that I´m used to StaxRip´s way of operating, which seems
to do anamorphic coversion in the background without input from the user, as you
just noticed; as opposed to MeGUI, which has its "Clever anamorphic encoding"
option in its GUI. Every frontend has its own way of doing things, and when you
change to a new one, it takes a while to get to know it and adapt to it.

There's no need to change the resolution or set the resizing to 720x480. In fact if you set the resizing to the original resolution using MeGUI, it won't bother adding it to the script, because it won't resize anything. In your last couple of posts you seemed to refer to "setting a PAL 4:3 flag" when referring to setting the resolution but maybe also when it comes to enabling anamorphic encoding, which is why I'm not 100% clear on what you mean.

When I said resolution, I meant resolution, the size, the original size of the video,
720x480 (numbers shown in "Resize" within "Crop & Resize" in AVS window); and
when I said DAR, I meant the display aspect ratio, 4:3 ("Input DAR"). The point is
that if I don´t touch the resolution ("Resize" not checked), nor the Input DAR (which
I assume MeGUI sets it automatically), the encoded video comes out always stretched.

And, yes, I said setting the "4:3 PAL flag" a few times too. Why? Because with this flag
set, it is the only way that the encoding of his DVD comes out looking fine, not stretched.
Hence, if I try the other DARs (for testing purposes), ALL of them come out stretched. So,
if I want the aspect ratio of the encoded video of this DVD to look natural, I have to set
the 4:3 PAL flag, and "Clever anamorphic encoding"!. What else can I say? I did a few
tests and this is what I got every time... Perhaps there is something wrong with this DVD.
I don´t know... I hope I can get hold of another NTSC DVD in the near future to do some
tests with it.

It´s alright, please let´s forget about this DVD issue because it is also getting to me! Hehe...
I thank you very much for taking your time explaning your view on this matter, and even
checking StaxRip. You´ve been too generous.

PS, I had a quick look and it appears the StaxRip x264 presets use the default x264 settings along with the appropriate x264 speed preset and tuning, so they seem to be what their names imply they are and don't use exotic x264 settings. The "x264" preset appears to use the x264 defaults. Have you had a chance to compare encoding speed with MeGUI yet?

Yes, of course, I did the speed comparison, and that´s the reason why I started to try MeGUI.
With the slower preset in both frontends (wihout editing any of them), MeGUI is faster.
StaxRip takes, depending on the project, around 2x on the second pass. With the XviD
codec, StaxRip is fast too. I don´t know why this happens with the latest versions of
StaxRip, but this is a fact, and as I told you, someone else told me it became slower for
him too. I wanted to try an older version of the program, but since it comes without the
applications and you have to download them from its interface and this feature doesn´t
work anymore (apparently it cannot connect to the servers), I decided to stop using it.
Now I´m learning MeGUI, and am liking it!

I take the opportunity to ask you something I miss in MeGUI:

When ripping a DVD in MeGUI, File Indexer uses DGIndex to load VOBs, but it
doesn´t have all the options that DGIndex has by its own, Up and Down/Remove.
Is there a way to make File Indexer show these options? You know that StaxRip´s
interface show them, so I miss them in MeGUI.

I thought of running DGIndex instead externally from Megui´s tools folder. This seems
to work fine, but has a drawback, you have to open the audio track manually, but I don´t
trust this method much, I´m not sure if there could be some detail missing in the process...

Thanks!

Cheers.

[DB83]

The bottom line is...

You just do not get it.

All NTSC dvds are 720*480. If you, at some stage, do not change that for the final output whether by a change in width*height or simulate the effect of the PAR within the dvd, your end video will look wrong. Goodness knows what would happen if your source was 16:9 or greater.

There is probably nothing amiss with the dvd. What is amiss is your own logic. If one program works for you, even though logic dictates that it should not, then use that one.

[hello_hello]

And, yes, I said setting the "4:3 PAL flag" a few times too. Why? Because with this flag
set, it is the only way that the encoding of his DVD comes out looking fine, not stretched. Hence, if I try the other DARs (for testing purposes), ALL of them come out stretched. So, if I want the aspect ratio of the encoded video of this DVD to look natural, I have to set the 4:3 PAL flag, and "Clever anamorphic encoding"!. What else can I say? I did a few tests and this is what I got every time... Perhaps there is something wrong with this DVD.
I don´t know... I hope I can get hold of another NTSC DVD in the near future to do some tests with it.

I was wrong with what I said originally. Now I've thought about it again, MeGUI only lets you set the Input DAR using an input DAR.... you tell MeGUI what the input DAR should be and MeGUI effectively works out the correct pixel aspect ratio to get you there, so the original video's resolution becomes irrelevant from a user's perspective. StaxRip lets you set either an input display aspect ratio or an input pixel aspect ratio. I was probably using the PAR at some stage while being too silly to think about it.
The upshot if it is, the difference between selecting a 4:3 PAL Input DAR and a 4:3 NTSC DAR is basically nothing as they're both 4:3. The difference is only something like 0.02% so either should produce the same result. If you change the Input PAR though, that's a different story as then the resize difference will be something like 20%.

So yeah, maybe there's something odd about that particular NTSC DVD. I've never seen a program confuse an NTSC DVD with a PAL one, but it does sometimes happen that a 4:3 DVD is seen as 16:9 (or the other way around), and if so manually changing the DAR to 4:3 will correct it. Maybe you were just unlucky and picked one of those DVDs to test with which confused the issue. If that's what happened, changing the Input DAR to either NTSC 4:3 or PAL 4:3 would both correct it and it'd make sense. If not, I don't know what happened.....

Yes, of course, I did the speed comparison, and that´s the reason why I started to try MeGUI.
With the slower preset in both frontends (wihout editing any of them), MeGUI is faster.

It's odd given the both use the same tools for encoding, because logically that means they should encode at the same speed. I'm not saying you're wrong as when it comes to computers I've had lots of problems which seem to be logically impossible, but now I have StaxRip installed again I'll try a comparison encode myself, just out of curiosity. I'll report back with the result later.

When ripping a DVD in MeGUI, File Indexer uses DGIndex to load VOBs, but it doesn´t have all the options that DGIndex has by its own, Up and Down/Remove.
Is there a way to make File Indexer show these options? You know that StaxRip´s interface show them, so I miss them in MeGUI.

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking there. I know DGIndex can open multiple vob files and then treat them as a single job for indexing, so if that's what you're asking.... no, MeGUI doesn't do that as such. However if you're wanting to open a set of sequentially numbered vob files which make up a movie etc there's no need to open them individually. Just open the first vob file in the set and the rest will automatically be included. That's a function of DGIndex itself (MeGUI has an option to disable it but normally you wouldn't) so any program which uses DGIndex should work the same way.
Most of the programs I've used over the years which use DGIndex for indexing require a DVD to be properly "prepared" for encoding, or ripped in such a way you have a set of vob files containing just the movie, or a set of vob files per episode etc. If that's what you're working with then it's just a matter of opening the first vob file in each set as an individual encoding job.

If you're referring to StaxRip and it's ability to open multiple files and encode them as a batch etc.... MeGUI won't but it's OneClick encoder (I've never used it myself) can be set it up and it's configurations saved as OneClick presets, then you'd probably open a file and let MeGUI take it from there, even if you do need to add them one at a time. The AVS Script Creator can also save it's settings as presets (I think it calls them profiles).

[hello_hello]

Well after some quick testing I'll confess I'm not seeing a huge StaxRip/MeGUI speed difference when it comes to x264 encoding. I opened a vob file with StaxRip and aside from letting StaxRip de-interlace it with Yadif I encoded it as is. I let the encode run for a few minutes while watching the processing speed and then loaded the script StaxRip created into MeGUI and checked the speed again.
My PC's getting a bit long in the tooth, but both programs settled down to processing at around 49fps. I didn't time anything and the speed wanders up and down by couple of frames per second as the encode progresses, but there didn't seem to be any major difference between them.

2 pass encoding was a slightly different story. I just created a script to encode 5 minutes of the video so it wouldn't take all day to do this, so once again the results aren't precise.
Not knowing much about 2 pass encoding I'd assume for some reason each program uses different x264 settings for the first pass, and if I had the motivation I'd go through log files, but as these will probably be the only 2 pass encodes I run for a long time.....

Using the x264 medium speed preset, MeGUI sat at around 163fps while running the first pass. StaxRip was maybe a little faster, running at around 165fps.
When I switched to the x264 slower speed preset, MeGUI's first pass speed dropped to around 123fps. For some reason StaxRip slowed more, running at 95fps.

Once they hit the second pass each time though, the actual encoding speed was pretty much the same. Maybe they differed by 1fps or so, but definitely not by a large amount. Both encoded at around 49fps using the medium x264 speed preset as they did when running a CRF encode. Both dropped to around 15fps when I changed to the slower speed preset. I really should upgrade this computer....

[vidqual]

Hi hello_hello,

I got good news, my friend!

Problem solved! The DVD was faulty. I got a new NTSC DVD to test, and with this one
everything works fine now in MeGUI. The Preview window updates with every DAR
change I try (obviously, just for testing purposes), and every DAR I set, stays; I´ve
just done 3 encoding tests and all of them have come out perfectly, no more stretched
aspect ratios, either with its 4:3 NTSC DAR, or a 4:3 PAL DAR, and without having to
check "Clever anamorphic encoding" anymore.

Yes, there is a very slight difference between NTSC and PAL DARs, indeed, as you say;
that was what I was expecting to see from the very first test I did, not a stretched picture.

I forgot to mention it (sorry about this), but that DVD was one of those re-mastered with
DVDShrink or a similar software, that a coworker lent me in a pen drive. So I guess
the thing was messed up... perhaps it was a bad conversion from PAL to NTSC? Who
cares now, I already deleted it. I should have used an original DVD. I´m relieved it was
not a problem with MeGUI, because the more I use it the more I like it.

Regarding my question on File Indexer´s use of DGIndex, I just wanted to know if
you knew if it could be set up, through scripting, etc., to have the sorting and
removing options that DGIndex has by its own, because there are some DVDs
that have various titlesets, and you may need to mix them differently because
some are not in the correct order (I don´t know about you, but I´ve come across
some titles that weren´t in the correct order), or removing some unwanted VOBs.
With One-Click you can only sort them by duration and name, and there´s no
removing. It´s OK if it is not possible, I´ll open DGIndex externally if I ever need
it again.

On the subject of the speed comparison between MeGUI and StaxRip with the
second pass, please don´t bother with it, it´s alright, I´ll do some more tests
when I can.

Thanks a lot once again for your help.

Cheers.