The Batman Bluray says its 720p

[knyght1]

Having an issue where The Batman bluray shows a smaller storage size and display size in Handbrake (1614 x 804) and an aspect ratio of 2.01:1

Even though the source storage size and display size are 1920 x 1080.

The result after ripping multiple times is it says its 720p

I am not doing anything different than I normally do.

Any help???

[Woodstock]

Handbrake will show you (by default) the TRIMMED size of the video. The default untrimmed size is 1920x1080, also known as "Bluray size".

What you get when you load it into handbrake is the size the video actually is, after the padding is removed. You can tell handbrake to leave that in place, which will change the default to include the black frame, which will show it as 1920x1080. But most people don't.

[knyght1]

But why is it downgrading it to 720p and not 1080p?

[Woodstock]

Most likely that's the closest it comes to "800 depth". There isn't a lot you can do about what a particular program calls a video after it's been run through handbrake.

When you view it before compression, does the viewing program show it as 1920x1080, but with lots of black around it?

[knyght1]

Before compression there is a lot of black around the picture. After compression very little.

[Woodstock]

The black is what is being removed to make it 1614x804. Surprised it didn't go for 1600x800, but that's probably down to being "exact" about dimensions.

What, exactly, is calling the result "720p"? If the resulting file is actually 1614x804, it's not 720p, but "close enough" for some display programs.

[knyght1]

The resolution in Plex is saying 720p.

Any way to avoid this from happening? I’ve never had it happen with any other bluray. I use very high settings for limited quality loss

[Woodstock]

Plex is, well, special in some ways.

A search for "plex says 720p" on Google comes up with complaints that Plex says "everything" over 720p is 720p, for clients that aren't registered with Plex as having higher capabilities. I doubt that is currently the case, but it is one possibility.

1614x804 should not qualify as 720p, but it also doesn't qualify as 1080p. Is Plex playing it as 720p, or just saying that it's 720p?

[knyght1]

On my tv it shows as 2160p. Which doesn't make sense. Also, since the black bar around the picture is smaller it appears that the entire frame isn't showing. For example the opening title where it says "The Batman" is stretched and gets cut off a little.

Can I alter a setting to keep this from happening?

[Woodstock]

Ah, what the 4K TV says... is really random, to be honest. I have several, and they vary in what they call less-than-4K signals. The Scepter units I have in front of me claim the output of my computers is 2160p. Or 1080p (Linux box). Sometimes 720p, and 480p, depending on what's feeding them. Haven't tested any of the non-standard feeds on them that I remember.

The TV will (generally) stick with its "highest" resolution, and scale everything to fit. So it's going to show this Batman series with lots of black around it (played from the original MKV file), or possible with little black and a lot of distortion (played from the compressed file). If you configure the TV as a monitor, it may display the file in a window, however your computer decides to feed it.

As for how to change the file to have it display "properly", I'd personally say don't bother, unless it's not displaying on your monitor at all. The monitor portion is going to adjust to what the file is, and it's better (nominally) to leave out the excess baggage of the black border. At most, I'd tell handbrake not to trim off the black, but that ends up being about a wash, file-size wise (black bars seem to compress very well).

[knyght1]

The tv is a 4K LG. It actually is pretty spot on displaying what the source truly is, 720, 1080, 2160...

Why is this movie causing an issue? Never happened before. Really would like it displayed correctly. Without adjusting the tv for 1 movie. Could I compress using something other than H.264?

[ZZorrander]

The film is so dark Handbrake may be trimming off some of the sides during the auto crop process. The 804 pixels tall sounds right since 1920/804 would be very close to 2.35:1. You should be able to remove the horizontal crop to get the full width.

[DaveQ]

Best I can tell, Plex figures out whether to display "1080p" or "720p" based on the HORIZONTAL resolution, not the vertical.

This is likely because of differing aspect ratios between various movies -- very wide aspect ratios would never register as "1080p" because their heights would always be much less than 1080. So instead Plex marks anything full width -- i.e., 1920 pixels wide (or close to) -- as "1080p" and anything narrower -- e.g., 1614 pixels wide -- as "720p." If its algorithm was a little more sophisticated, it would mark videos 1600 pixels wide as "900p," but I won't go off on that tangent right now.

The real question is: Why is your Handbrake encode reducing the width of the image from 1920 pixels to 1614 pixels? The auto-crop usually does a good job determining the actual height and width of the image, but sometimes films with black image areas are incorrectly detected. (What should be cropped off are non-image areas -- the black bars that never contain image data.)

Go back into Handbrake, set up your encode again, and check the "Cropping" section of the "Dimensions" tab. The top and bottom fields should have values in them, to eliminate the black bars. But the left and right fields shouldn't, unless the original blu-ray was encoded with pillarboxes (non-image areas on the left and right). I don't have the "The Batman" blu-ray, so I don't know if it was encoded like that. But it shouldn't be. If the full width of the movie contains image data, then erase any values you find in those left and right fields, ensure the encode is set to produce something 1920 pixels wide, and re-encode.

[S.p.e.c.t.r.e.]

Go back into Handbrake, set up your encode again, and check the "Cropping" section of the "Dimensions" tab. The top and bottom fields should have values in them, to eliminate the black bars. But the left and right fields shouldn't, unless the original blu-ray was encoded with pillarboxes (non-image areas on the left and right). But it shouldn't be. If the full width of the movie contains image data, then erase any values you find in those left and right fields, ensure the encode is set to produce something 1920 pixels wide, and re-encode.

Hi DaveQ, Are we suppose to change the width setting right below the source line also or leave that alone?

Below is the original settings...nothing changed.

source 1920x1080 par 1/1, width 1614x804. automatic everything.

original.jpg (19.02 KiB) Viewed 16227 times

Option 1>>Below is just the cropping changed to custom and left and right zeroed. Width is unchanged and still shows 1614 instead of 1920 and PAR is 320x269

Just change the crop to 0. Width still says 1614 instead of 1920 and par shows 320x269.

option 1- 0 Left right crop but width still shows 1614.jpg (23.26 KiB) Viewed 16227 times

Option 2>> crop changed to custom. Left and right zeroed. Changed width from 1614 to 1920. Par now shows "1x1"

Also changed width to 1920 instead of 1614. par changed to 1x1

Do option 1 and also change width from 1614 to 1920.jpg (19.87 KiB) Viewed 16227 times

[DaveQ]

So I've been away from these forums for a while and only saw this question today. I apologize for the long delay in responding.

Short answer -- yes, after changing the custom crop settings, you may have to press the up arrow button next to the Width field, until the width reaches the maximum allowable value as determined by your other settings. It looks like those values (Width and Height) don't automatically update when you switch cropping from "Automatic" to "Custom."

The Batman is a very dark film, with deep shadows out near the edges of the frame in many scenes. It's not surprising to me that the auto-detect algorithm is reading that blackness as pillarbox (non-image) area.

Another example of the automatic crop algorithm incorrectly cropping image data is with many Mystery Science Theater 3000 films. Because the bottom part of the frame has the silhouettes of the MST3K characters sitting in theater seats, the dark seats area is mistakenly marked as letterboxed non-image data and the bottom part of the frame is often incorrectly cropped too much.