why is TITANIC widescreen BUT is 4:3 within the .IFO files?

[defense]

hi, Titanic is the ONLY movie to this point that i've seen that is actually Widescreen, at least my version is, but within the main movie .IFO and VIDEOTS.IFO, the movie shows as 4:3. I've been trying to read all the differences on aspect ratios and I think I have a good idea now, but this movie confuses me because EVERY other 4:3 movie I have that says 4:3 in the main movie .IFO file is "FULL SCREEN" with the exception of TITANIC. Can anyone please explain what the difference between Titanic and most other 4:3 movies is, other then the fact that this one is widescreen. I thought widescreen was 2:35:1 or 1:85:1, 16:9, not 4:3.

Thanks in advance for any information on this.

[damnim]

Either you have looked in the wrong place in the .ifo files for aspect ratio; menus are usually 4:3 and further down you will see the movie's aspect as 16:9 or the movie has been encoded with black bars at the top and the bottom to resemble 16:9 when played back at the encoded 4:3 resolution. Personally I have never seen this but I know that some movies are encoded this way.

[Vejita-sama]

IIRC the movie was shot 16:9, but the actually DVD has been encoded with the black bars hard coded, then authored at 4:3.

[defense]

thank you both for the reply. The aspect ratios are still a little confusing because just when I think I have it down pat, I see a movie like Titanic which confuses me even more. @damnim, I did make the mistake early on of seeing menu attributes without actually reading it and just looking for the .ifo file, but I quickly realized my mistake and I can assue you on Titanic, the .ifo file is absolutely 4:3 for "movie" attributes, although the movie itself is 16:9. I guess it is one of those you haven't personally seen yet. And this is the ONLY movie i've seen like it.

IIRC the movie was shot 16:9, but the actually DVD has been encoded with the black bars hard coded, then authored at 4:3.

Thanks for that info, would you be able to explain to me why the movie was authored at 4:3? I mean, it doesn't seem like it makes any sense. Why didn't the studios do the same thing for Titanic as they do for the other movies which are 16:9, just author them 16:9? Thanks

[damnim]

would you be able to explain to me why the movie was authored at 4:3? I mean, it doesn't seem like it makes any sense.

It doesn't make any sense to me either and I have authored a lot of DVDs. However the way you author them and the authoring program could hold the answer to your question.

If you put a 4:3 menu into a 16:9 title set most programs will reject it or convert the movie itself to a 4:3. Vice a Versa can also ocur with some programs.

Scenarist is one such program that makes you put the menu into a language folder before it will allow a different aspect ratio other then the movie. It's difficult to explain if you have never used the program.

If the movie or video that I am dealing with is at a questionable aspect than I just encode a sample of it and play it to see what it looks like. I standardize my authoring into 4:3 or 16:9 and keep it simple.

Hope this helps.

[BJ_M]

titanic has some errors also in the encoding -- wasnt the best effort .. unless they have all been corrected now .. one of the biggest errors was that parts of it are interlaced and some not ..

[damnim]

Somewhat off the string BJ_M is more than likely correct. It's possible that either the menu system or movie encode was completed at different times and places and they were sloppily mastered together at a third place.

I have ran into several commercial movies that have had a mix of progressive, interlaced, top field and bottom field all mixed into the program stream. Running an encoder on such a mess will end up in a choppy picture unless you do one of two things;

1. Strip all the cells out of the vobs and encode individually and put back together or,
2. Use a program like DVD2One to shrink the entire mess.

I am beginning to wonder if the studios aren't doing this on purpose to prevent backups.

[defense]

titanic has some errors also in the encoding -- wasnt the best effort .. unless they have all been corrected now .. one of the biggest errors was that parts of it are interlaced and some not ..

Wow, that's very hard to believe. Not that I doubt you because your posts are as accurate as they get, but how can that be? I mean, at one time, or maybe even still, that movie was the highest "GROSSING" movie of all time..wasn't it? If that's the case, how can they even attempt to sloppily put a DVD together that way where that some of it is Interlaced and some Progressive? Wouldn't that screw up older or even newer dvd players and cause a crappy picture?

I have ran into several commercial movies that have had a mix of progressive, interlaced, top field and bottom field all mixed into the program stream.

damnim, i'm just curious..what are some of the movies you have come across that have the field orders reversed and some of the other problems you mention? Are they all NTSC, or are you referring to PAL? Let me know when you get a chance, thanks

[damnim]

All of what I deal with is NTSC since I live here in this Great Country the USA.

There are several big movie hits that have been on the market that had to be recalled or redone due to mastering errors which entails DVD compliance issues, playability etc.

Off the top of my head "Anna & the King" with Jodie Foster, "Rules of Engagement" had differences in the program streams.

As to your question

some of it is Interlaced and some Progressive? Wouldn't that screw up older or even newer dvd players and cause a crappy picture?

No, because the set top reads the flags imbedded into the video stream and plays it according to those flags instructions.

I've noticed that the studio's intro is usually different then the rest of the movie which depending on the program used to determine video characteristics will say that the entire movie is interlaced when in fact only the studio intro is interlaced and the rest of the film is progressive.

You can put together different types of video ie. bottom field first, top field first, progressive, interlaced and they will play fine if the set top or software player can read the video stream flags correctly.

[defense]

thanks again damnim, I've said it before, and will say it again. I always learn at LEAST one new thing per day on this amazing site, and it's usually more then one. 8) I'm in the USA too and that is interesting what you say about recalls, I thought there was intense scrutinizing to make sure some of these disks don't get out which are poorly created. I guess it's like cars and all other mass production, you can expect errors. It still shocks me with Titanic though, because with the money that movie raked in, I would think nothing but the best would of gone into making that DVD. And people wonder why only the poor shit bleeding hearts care about the MPAA. Selling a disk like that for $30 or so, and it's poorly made.

I've noticed that the studio's intro is usually different then the rest of the movie which depending on the program used to determine video characteristics will say that the entire movie is interlaced when in fact only the studio intro is interlaced and the rest of the film is progressive.

Yea, i've noticed that too, as a matter of fact, I really noticed it last night when I found an error on SEVERAL of my re-encoded disks and had to thoroughly look at each one. The intros and ending credits are interlaced, but the main movie is Progressive.

This is true from almost all of our theatrical releases. And as far as software misreporting, yep, I noticed that bitrateviewer only takes the read of the beginning of the VOB which in our case would be Interlaced, and reports the entire movie as Interlaced which screwed me up even more and caused me to spend countless hours testing methods which made no sense because the movie was progressive.

Fortunately for me, adam diagnosed my problem QUICKLY and I was able to start making backups of my backups with some adjustments. Anyway, thanks for your help and info, it was very helpful, and hopefully I can use it to help other posters in the future. Thanks

[Robert Simandl]

At the time Titanic was mastered, Paramount wasn't doing much of anything in 16 by 9 yet.... their DVD transfers were mostly made from the old LaserDisc masters.

Though several 16 by 9 widescreen releases had been put out by Paramount by the time Titanic arrived, most of those had been mastered AFTER Titanic. Titanic sat on the shelf for at least six months between mastering and release, probably because it was still raking in big bucks theatrically while the video mastering was being done.

[Gristle McThornbody]

Nowdays most Video/DVD mastering is started even before the movie hits theaters. Also, I have seen several widescreen DVDs that are actually just 4:3 with embedded letterboxing. "The Thing" and "Bound" come to mind. I'm sure there are hundreds more. Oh well....

[SaSi]

Interesting and funny things learnt. Just when I thought that I'm only "stupid" in hard-coding letterbox bars in the movie. Really, if you play Titanic on a wide screen, what do you get?

By the way, hard-coding the black bars helps the back-up process a bit. A PAL movie in 16:9 (proper) format is actually 720x576 and compressed by the DVD player during playback on a narrow TV. This means that 576 pixel rows go to the video stream.

If you hard-code the black bars, you need to shrink the vertical rows to about 400 (and 380 for some). This means that (on a 4:3 TV set) you get exactly the same result, but for a given average bit-rate you get better quality because less video rows have to be encoded.

I am not saying it is correct to do it that way, just an extra reserve tool to use or a very long 3 hour movie (e.g. Das Boot), with three audio tracks (English, German & Commentary).

[Vejita-sama]

Sasi - Since the video is 4:3 if you play it on a widescreen TV it will look like any other 4:3 video. Black bars on the left/right and 'full screen' top to bottom. However, because the letterboxing is hard encoded/part of the MPEG, you'll also see the letter boxed bars.

So it'll have black bars on all four sides. Apomorphic DVDs were created to prevent this (and a few other things). Basically most new DVDs are apomorphic. They are stored in their 'original DAR' and flagged as such.

You then tell you DVD player if you have a 4:3 (standard) or widescreen (actually 1.77:1) TV. If you have a standard TV the DVD player adds the letterboxing on the fly, if you have a wide screen it does nothing.

[drewson99]

do a lot of bits get wasted when the black bars are hard-coded? is it proportional to their size with respect to the size of the screen, or do they take less bits because they are solid black?

I have come across these types of DVDs many times, a lot of the cheaper "thrown onto DVD" movies at Netflix are like this.

Andy

[damnim]

Not a lot of bits are wasted but some are. That is why some of us like to trim the black bars out of the video stream and encode it to a plain 16:9 format.

[SaSi]

dannim, a small fine-tuning to you comment regarding bitrate wastage for encoding the black bars.

MPEG-2 encodes frames in macroblocks. Encoding is done in slices of 16 lines and then in blocks of 8x8 elements.

If the black bars start exactly at a slice boundary, i.e. the top bar has a height of exactly 16 x whatever and the movie height is again 16 x whatever, then actually very little bitrate is wasted as the encoder has a totaly black block to encode.

If however the above is not true (i.e. bars are not carefully sized), then the boundary blocks contain partly black bars and partly video frames. A lot of bitrate can be wasted this way.

In that context, I have encountered a couple of films that while being 16:9, have such black bars hard coded because the aspect ratio is even higher and these bars are actually NOT quite black - rather hazy black, if you know what I mean. Probably a bad transfer to DVD but a lot of bitrate is wasted that way. A 6.2 Gb m2v stream ripped off a VOB file, passed through VDUB for cropping and fed to Tmpgenc for encoding (with carefully sized bars) produced a very high quality MPEG-2 stream of only ~3.5 Gb.

Pointing this out, because it is something important to keep in mind while framing a movie for correct aspect ratio.

[damnim]

SaSi

You are precisely correct in what you say and I welcome your details with respect to those "Black Bars". I just didn't want to go into details about it.

8)