www.makemkv.com

I'm new to ripping DVDs and Blu-Rays so I'm hoping I've missed something here.

Basically, I've ripped a few different Blu-Rays and when I've played them back in VLC Player they are almost zoomed out with black bars across top and bottom (I understand this is normal for widescreen but I have an ultrawide monitor) but also on the left and right sides of the movies there's about 440 pixels on either side of black which I'm assuming is burnt into the file itself. I've also tired different movie players and playing it through jellyfin on my phone and the issue persists. The files that MakeMKV outputs also lack dimensions (frame height and width) in the metadata which may be relevant?

My issue is I'd like to avoid transcoding as it affects the quality and I was hoping to keep the files as original as possible. If I have to transcode so be it but I'd like it to be the last resort.
Is this something I can do to fix this issue?

Example attached is from The Hunger Games Blu-Ray rip I did fresh.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YO7zEj ... drive_link

Some BD sources are formatted weirdly, since they're forced to be 1920x1080, even when they're not actually. So, you get black bars to fill in.

If you run them through handbrake (for instance), it will strip the bars. For some older content, where they took "standard DVD" content and just blew it up to fit, you can end up with bars on all 4 sides, or just two. So 1440 or so width is what you get after processing.

I have also tried it with newer BD sources like Thor Ragnarok (2018) and it's the same issue. Same with the 4K copies of harry potter I've tried. I'll have to transcode them for now so they're usable but I'm a bit of a purist and was hoping to not touch the files once they're ripped from the disc.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cMNEk5 ... drive_link

I also tried newer movies that would be made specifically with UHD in mind like Thor Ragnarok which was released only 5 years ago in 2018 and Avengers Endgame which was 2019 and they all have the same issue. There's no way they were upscaling DVD content for that.

It seems like for now I'll have to use re-encoding with Handbrake as a bandaid fix for now but I don't see it as a solution.

Example from Thor Ragnarok (2018)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cMNEk5 ... sp=sharing

In VLC, there are two items that can affect the 'shape' of the video you see. One is called Aspect Ratio and the other is Crop. Make sure default is selected for both.

As a side note, for your Google Drive links, I'm presented with a login screen instead of (presumably) your screenshot.

ALL blu-rays are hard-coded in 16:9, it is part of the specification. I seem to remember they considered anamorphic but ultimately went for a straight 16:9. Usually this isn't a problem when viewed on a standard 16:9 screen, with 4:3 content hardcoded with pillarboxes, and wider movies such as those in 2.35 hardcoded in letterbox, but that is how the raw files are delivered. This is going to be the case with every blu-ray you buy.

Of course having an ultrawide monitor this results in the issue you have. They weren't expecting these to be watched on such wide screens (which I personally think was short-sighted). Handbrake is the only permanent solution, but VLC does have a cropping feature that allows you to manually set it to the ratio of the actual movie