Backing up Non-Anamorphic DVDs

[koberulz]

I'm using MakeMKV to back my discs up onto a Plex server. Simple enough for most content.

But I have a few non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs. I'm thinking the most efficient way to handle things is to crop, and maybe scale, them so they play properly on a widescreen TV without having to zoom or whatever else.

What's the most efficient way of doing this?

[aedipuss]

i assume you mean widescreen but with additional black bars top/bottom for movies that are 2:35/1 or the like. mostly it's done by cropping off the bars and only re-encoding the active video. so for pal video you could end up with something like 1024x436. i'd just see how it plays on the system before scaling. the tv's hardware is much better than re-encoding again.

[koberulz]

I mean 16x9 content encoded within a 4x3 file. Like a lot of old MGM DVDs of films, the US release of the first season of House, the Australian release of the third season of The West Wing, etc. So it plays windowboxed on a 16x9 screen.

[manono]

I mean 16x9 content encoded within a 4x3 file.

aedipuss said it correctly. It's not 16:9 content. 16:9 is a DAR and your DAR is 4:3. Maybe you should have said 1.78:1 content, or 2.35:1 content as aedipuss mentioned.

And I agree, crop away the black bars, resize and reencode just the active video.

...so they play properly on a widescreen TV without having to zoom

They'll be zoomed anyway, unless you resize to something like 1920x800 or 1920x1080 which wouldn't be a good idea, I don't think

[koberulz]

I meant zooming manually, ie going into my settings and adjusting the zoom to match the content.

The question is how to crop them. MakeMKV just copies exactly what's on the disc into an MKV file, audio tracks and subtitles and all. No worrying about recompressing or any of that. Cropping, on the other hand, is going to require extra work and re-encoding.

[davexnet]

I meant zooming manually, ie going into my settings and adjusting the zoom to match the content.

Cropping, on the other hand, is going to require extra work and re-encoding.

If you want the result you specified, I don't think there is much choice

[manono]

The question is how to crop them

Lots of ways. I use an AviSynth script. So do you, I believe. And not by using an MKV but the DVD itself as a source, and DGIndex and MPEG2Source.

I meant zooming manually, ie going into my settings and adjusting the zoom to match the content.

Yes, you could do that. That won't look very good either as by turning those widescreen videos into 4:3 DVDs, they've lost a lot of resolution as compared to making 16:9 DVDs of them. You might just decide that watching on your television surrounded on all four sides by black is better than zooming or reencoding to remove the black bars. Have you tried yet, to see how they look?

Cropping, on the other hand, is going to require extra work and re-encoding.

That's right. So why complain here? Complain to the fools that released those crummy DVDs in the first place.

[johnmeyer]

Rather than spend all the time doing this, and degrading the video in the process (every re-encode reduces quality), can't you simply use the re-size feature on your TV set to do the cropping while you are playing? That's how I've handled this when I've come across these DVDs (or OTA movies that sometimes get broadcast this way).

[_Al_]

I'm for using remote to zoom-in as well, if the issue is just with "watching" a content. Our brain just messes with us thinking it needs to be fixed when TV frame is different than video frame.

[koberulz]

The question is how to crop them

Lots of ways. I use an AviSynth script. So do you, I believe. And not by using an MKV but the DVD itself as a source, and DGIndex and MPEG2Source.

The question is what's going to get me the best quality at the smallest filesize, akin to the direct MKV rips of the other, competently-produced, discs.

You might just decide that watching on your television surrounded on all four sides by black is better than zooming or reencoding to remove the black bars. Have you tried yet, to see how they look?

I'm 15 feet away from a 55-inch TV, I need all the size I can get.

Cropping, on the other hand, is going to require extra work and re-encoding.

That's right. So why complain here? Complain to the fools that released those crummy DVDs in the first place.[/QUOTE]I'm not complaining, just observing. Seeing as fixing the files myself is likely to be more effective than whining to a company that effectively no longer exists.

I'm for using remote to zoom-in as well, if the issue is just with "watching" a content.

Which is doable through my Blu-ray player. Less so if I'm watching through the Plex app on my TV, at least as far as I know. Certainly impossible with a phone, or tablet.

[_Al_]

The question is what's going to get me the best quality at the smallest filesize, akin to the direct MKV rips of the other, competently-produced, discs.

This is entirely up to you, you get that DVD into Avisynth or Vidcoder and crop black bars away to 16:9 but not changing aspect ratio, this means without needing any calculator leaving width as 720 and cropping height to 406 (taking more from the bottom as oppose the top if looking at your example), or you crop more if movie is more wide than 16:9.

Then you encode the top quality, RF18 (CRF 18) or lower, so you select the quality and therefore resulting size. Better quality means bigger size, but at certain quality you'd only balloon videosize and not seeing much difference. That 'threshold' could differ, it depends on many things (TV size, watching distance etc) but it is around CRF18.

[_Al_]

oh, that 406 would mess up aspect ratio because we do not know that content is exactly 16:9,
so you use good old DAR=PARxSAR
Australia is PAL country so SAR is 12:11 for 4:3 (your DVD),
4/3 = 704/height * 12/11
you can do this, crop 8pixels left and right, resize to 4/3 any way you'd like then crop top and bottom

[koberulz]

Most of it probably isn't 16x9, they're movies so they're anywhere from 1.66-2.35. And they're US DVDs.

It's not quite as simple as cropping in AviSynth and then encoding with x264 to get the same result as MakeMKV would. I want to retain audio tracks, subtitles, and chapters.

[jagabo]

It's easy. DVD comes in only two aspect ratios: 4:3 and 16:9. Any content that's not one of those aspect ratios is cropped, letterboxed, pillarboxed, or some combination of those. For a 4:3 DVD you resize to a 4:3 frame size then crop away the black borders. For a 16:9 you resize to a 16:9 frame size and crop away the borders. The posted screen shot has already been resized to a 4:3 frame size. Cropping away the black borders leaves about a 1.6:1 video.

Or, if your player supports it, you can crop away the black bars and use pixel aspect ratio (aka sample aspect ratio) to let the player do the resizing. In theory, 4:3 PAL DVD has a PAR of 16:15, 16:9 PAL DVD has a PAR of 64:45. NTSC 4:3 DVD has a PAR of 8:9, 16:9 NTSC DVD has a PAR of 40:33.

[_Al_]

Is it not Ripbot264 capable of all of this? It seems to handle tracks and subtitles, check if it can copy chapters as well.

Then just browse to Avisynth script and crop 8 pixel left and right (add that line above resizing to 4:3, like best would be 768, 576 to keep the same count for horizontal lines), ad then crop those black bars on top and bottom. If movie is more wide, you just crop more. This way you always keep original aspect ration whatever widescreen movie is.

[aedipuss]

i'd use vidcoder for an easy way to do it. it has a manual crop mode and preview to adjust the crop if you don't like it's auto mode. allows passthrough of any audio you want or re-encoding. along with subs and chapters.


[Attachment 48000 - Click to enlarge]

[hello_hello]

The question is how to crop them.

I'm thinking this is an opportunity to shamelessly plug my CropResize script. CropResize 2018-03-17.zip

The source I had handy wasn't a DVD, so I simulated a DVD with a widescreen picture by cropping 100 pixels from the top and bottom, adding 100 pixel borders, and resizing to PAL DVD dimensions. Hopefully _Al_'s brain won't melt. It's just a demo.

By default, the script resizes to square pixel dimensions. You can disable resizing if you prefer an anamorphic output.

The first screenshot shows the script with the cropping preview enabled. There's no need to specify any resizing (you can use zero for the width and height). You only need to specify the desired cropping and the input display aspect ratio and the script will do the rest. For the first screenshot below, the yellow overlay shows the specified cropping.

I'll probably get into trouble for taking liberties...., but I regularly use the script to crop and zoom to 16:9. All you need to do is specify a 16:9 width and height. I don't crop to 16:9 for video I'm archiving, just for temporary copies.

Screenshot two shows how the video will be cropped and resized when just cropping the black. The equivalent of Crop(4,108,-4,-108) for this example (extra height cropping to make the yellow overlay for the preview more obvious).

Screenshot three shows the cropping preview after telling the script to output 16:9 dimensions (704x396). It'll do exactly what you tell it to, but it crops the picture to the same aspect ratio as the output (16:9 in this case) so as not to distort it. Unless you specifically want to crop to a certain aspect ratio, it's usually better to only specify the output width and let the script take care of the height. That way, you won't accidentally crop lots of picture by specifying the wrong dimensions. The light blue overlay in screenshot three (left and right sides) is the extra cropping the script applied to achieve 16:9 dimensions. The cropped and resized result is the fourth screenshot.

# Simulating a PAL DVD as my source.
Spline36Resize(720,576).Crop(0,100,0,-100).AddBorders(0,100,0,100)

# Cropping the black. Auto-resizing. Screenshots 1 & 2.
CropResize(0,0, 4,108,-4,-108, InDAR=15.0/11.0)

# Cropping the black and specifying 16:9 output dimensions. Screenshots 3 & 4.
CropResize(704,396, 4,108,-4,-108, InDAR=15.0/11.0)


PS. I generally use 15.0/11.0 as the input display aspect ratio for 4:3 DVDs. You can specify exactly 4.0/3.0, but 15.0/11.0 is more likely to be correct.
For 16:9 DVDs you can choose between 16.0/9.0 and 20.0/11.0 for the input display aspect ratio. If in doubt, I go with 16.0/9.0.

[koberulz]

I've tried RipBot and VidCoder but I keep ending up with interlaced files flagged as progressive.

Tried running the RipBot MKV through MKVtoolnix and flagging it but it didn't work.

EDIT: And the process of installing either VidCoder or Haali Media Splitter (which RipBot requires) has broken my AviSynth install; I'm getting the error "There is no function named 'SmoothLevels'." when trying to use it. It worked just fine a couple of days ago, and SmoothAdjust.dll is still present in the plugins folder. All my avs files have some purple icon now though.

[davexnet]

I've tried RipBot and VidCoder but I keep ending up with interlaced files flagged as progressive.

Tried running the RipBot MKV through MKVtoolnix and flagging it but it didn't work.

EDIT: And the process of installing either VidCoder or Haali Media Splitter (which RipBot requires) has broken my AviSynth install; I'm getting the error "There is no function named 'SmoothLevels'." when trying to use it. It worked just fine a couple of days ago, and SmoothAdjust.dll is still present in the plugins folder. All my avs files have some purple icon now though.

One thing I noticed about Vidcoder, is does not turn on the "decomb" filter automatically, you have to find it under filters and activate it.
Handbrake, on the otherhand, appears to detect the video type and turns the filter on itself.

[hello_hello]

I've tried RipBot and VidCoder but I keep ending up with interlaced files flagged as progressive.

Personally, I wouldn't encode interlaced. Especially when QTGMC can de-interlace better than most players.
If you don't enable the de-interlacing the GUI you're using offers, you have tell x264 to encode as interlaced, which is far less efficient than progressive encoding. For interlaced encoding you just need to add --tff or -bff to the x264 command line, depending on top or bottom field first.
http://www.chaneru.com/Roku/HLS/X264_Settings.htm#tff

[koberulz]

At the moment I'm more concerned with trying to fix AviSynth. Apparently ColorMatrix doesn't exist anymore either. WTF is going on?

EDIT: There's an AviSynth+ folder next to my AviSynth folder. I assume that's the issue. Do I just delete it? Will that break Haali? Or can I safely move my plugins into plugins+ and just carry on? What's the difference between AviSynth and AviSynth+?

[davexnet]

At the moment I'm more concerned with trying to fix AviSynth. Apparently ColorMatrix doesn't exist anymore either. WTF is going on?

Post your script here

[koberulz]

I assume you replied while I was editing my earlier post.

[davexnet]

I've never played with Avisynth+, seems to be a fork with some additional features.
If it is uninstalled, I doubt whether having a folder there is an issue.
But sounds like something is messed up, I would uninstall all flavors of Avisynth and just
reinstall the regular version
What is your issue with haali? Are you running XP?

[koberulz]

I'm running Windows 7. I don't have an issue with Haali other than the fact that Haali has some sort of integration with AviSynth, and installing it (required for RipBot) is what seemed to kick this whole issue off.