1:1 aspect ratio

I posted a question about a squished image in another thread and didn't get any reply to that, so I figured I'd try another route. I've been playing around with settings in VLC and when I select Video>Aspect-ratio>1:1 my squished image is fixed. So my question is how can I fix the VOB files or the entire VIDEO_TS contents of this DVD to get these same settings? The current setting is 4:3 and it has letterbox. But, as I noted in that other post, the image is squished. Thanks.

If I understand you correctly, you see something like this:

Originally Posted by Case

If I understand you correctly, you see something like this:

Yes, the image that you posted is the same thing that I'm seeing. (I'm still learning the settings for imageshack so here is an exact image in VLC.) The settings is 4:3, not 16:9. When I switch it to 16:9 in MyDVDEDIT I see the same thing in terms of a squished image but the image also becomes stretched.

Again, 4:3 is still squished when I view the file with Apple's DVD player, with VLC (prior to the 1:1 switch), and when I burn the VIDEO_TS to DVD. When I make the change to 1:1 in VLC the image is fixed but still framed in letterbox. This 1:1 fix is the only thing that has worked for me. But obviously it doesn't do me any good since I want to burn the VIDEO_TS and watch the match on my TV rather than watching on my TV screen.

So is there a way to fix this problem?

Re-encoding with cropping and stretching to 4:3 full screen would fix it... I doubt there's an easy fix.

Originally Posted by Case

Re-encoding with cropping and stretching to 4:3 full screen would fix it... I doubt there's an easy fix.

Can you walk me through that process? I see "no crop" in ffmpeg whenever I encode but I don't see a crop feature in DVDffmpeg or DVDmpeg2enc. (I have a variety of freeware applications like MPEG streamclip and MyDVDEDIT if ffmpeg isn't the tool.)

BTW do you have any idea why the file would be like this? I know you're not a psychic but it seems strange that a DVD would look like this--is it meant for a widescreen TV or something? Thanks.

Rip your DVD title as a single VOB (or MPG) file. Load the VOB file in ffmpegX. Set the DVD ffmpeg preset. In the Video tab, make sure Autosize is set to 'DVD' (=DVD 4:3). In the Audio tab, match the specs of the source file. In the Filters tab, press Autocrop to remove the black bars. In the Options tab, set your options of preference, e.g. High Quality, Use B-frames, 4 motion vectors, Trellis quantization. Hit 'Encode'.

The letterbox bars will be removed from the source, then scaled to DVD size with a 4:3 flag.

Someone else with more DVD Recorder experience could be more helpful than my guesses on the why of your video...

If you just want to watch the video, I noticed that my DVD player has 16:9, 4;3 and 4:3 letterbox settings. These can override the setting in the disk, unless you've actually encoded a 4:3 file with black bars.

Originally Posted by Case

Rip your DVD title as a single VOB (or MPG) file. Load the VOB file in ffmpegX. Set the DVD ffmpeg preset. In the Video tab, make sure Autosize is set to 'DVD' (=DVD 4:3). In the Audio tab, match the specs of the source file. In the Filters tab, press Autocrop to remove the black bars. In the Options tab, set your options of preference, e.g. High Quality, Use B-frames, 4 motion vectors, Trellis quantization. Hit 'Encode'.

The letterbox bars will be removed from the source, then scaled to DVD size with a 4:3 flag.

Someone else with more DVD Recorder experience could be more helpful than my guesses on the why of your video...

Thanks for these tips. I'll give it a shot.

Originally Posted by AlanHK

If you just want to watch the video, I noticed that my DVD player has 16:9, 4;3 and 4:3 letterbox settings. These can override the setting in the disk, unless you've actually encoded a 4:3 file with black bars.

I didn't do the origianl encode but my guess is that the match was recorded with a DVD recorder that was then ripped and the disk image was shared. I'm guessing that the black bars are part of the encode because they are always present. The 1:1 aspect ratio in VLC doesn't remove the bars but it does fix the image (i.e., it stretches the image up/down).

I just tried playing with the settings on my DVD player and it didn't correct the problem. Thanks for the suggestion, though, it was worth a shot.