Letterboxing flipping on and off from scene to scene

[mage0]

Ripped a couple UHD discs recently but seeing a strange symptom during playback on Windows 10. The frame is letterboxed in one scene & then not letterboxed in the next. I can live with either of these output modes but flipping between them every 3 minutes is not great.

The symptom is the same in multiple players (MPV, PowerDVD, Microsoft Movies & TV), so I imagine the problem is in the MKV file. Suggestions? Thanks, BGU

[Woodstock]

What title? Some I have do that for artistic reasons, especially when they're merging old and new video.

[mage0]

I had the same thought when watching my rip of Interstellar. By the time I got to Tenet last night & realized the aspect was switching 60-70 times across 2.5 hours, it didn't seem like an artistic choice any more.

Believe it or not, I haven't found a way to play these discs in the "normal" way on Windows 10 (straight from BD-ROM), what with CyberLink's insistence on Intel SGX, etc., etc. Otherwise I could rule out the artistic decision theory in the obvious way. : )

[Woodstock]

Handbrake is one option to try; some people complain that it breaks things when it autocrops movies like this.

If you want to preserve the changes but NOT have the video swap around all the time, you can turn off autocrop and set manual cropping to all zeros, then the result should be all the same aspect ratio.

[mage0]

Thank you for the suggestion. Should we report the original problem to the development team?

[Woodstock]

Since MakeMKV is copying the video stream from the disk to the MKV file, the problem would be in the stream. Especially if it's changing at scene boundaries. In a "normal" playback environment (disk + licened UHD player + fixed-resolution TV), you would probably never notice it, but computer players size the window to fit the video.

Is it still visible if you make the video "full screen", rather than watching it in a window?

[dcoke22]

The Dark Knight (2008) is a movie that changes aspect ratios. Several action sequences were shot with IMAX cameras on a 65mm negative and the rest on the more common 35mm. The aspect ratio of those two negative sizes are different and the director chose not crop the movie so it was a consistent aspect ratio throughout.

In the first minute of the film, the opening logos are a 'letterbox' format and then the bank robbery is not in the letterbox format. In any case, when I play the .mkv with MPV (on my Mac) the window doesn't change size. Sometimes there are black bars at the top & bottom and sometimes there aren't.

Changing aspect ratios seems to be Christopher Nolan's signature lately.

[mage0]

The Dark Knight (2008) is a movie that changes aspect ratios. Several action sequences were shot with IMAX cameras on a 65mm negative and the rest on the more common 35mm. The aspect ratio of those two negative sizes are different and the director chose not crop the movie so it was a consistent aspect ratio throughout.

In the first minute of the film, the opening logos are a 'letterbox' format and then the bank robbery is not in the letterbox format. In any case, when I play the .mkv with MPV (on my Mac) the window doesn't change size. Sometimes there are black bars at the top & bottom and sometimes there aren't.

Changing aspect ratios seems to be Christopher Nolan's signature lately.

Wow. You're right! I just checked the rip of my non-UHD Dark Knight blu-ray & it is doing the same thing. With all three films being from the same director, this is starting to make more sense. Creative choice? Do you own either of the other movies mentioned so I can get a sanity check?

P.S. Yes, this happens in full-screen.

[dcoke22]

I do have Interstellar (2014) and it does the same thing. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/te ... tt_dt_spec The technical details on IMDB for the movie suggest that it was also shot both in 65mm and 35mm.

[kyprime22]

this is very common, a lot of movies use multiple aspect ratios

[preserve]

As mentioned, many movies that have these “IMAX” or expanded aspect ratios use them more selectively at specific scenes, with the entire scene in the expanded ratio, and then switching back, not switching back and forth constantly on a shot-by-shot basis. TRON: Legacy is another example but there are lots of them.

But yes, some movies use this technique more distractingly and annoyingly, with more constant switching.