Chapter and aspect ratio issues with certain DVD's

[BlackDragon24]

"The Tudors" Season 1 Discs 1, 2, 3 NTSC DVD USA

When I decrypt it shows me the screen with the titles. I am selecting to keep only the AC3 3/2+1 track and the video track. Each title has 7-9 chapters as reported by makemkv, but in mediainfo and mkvmerge it is showing only 1 chapter with timestamp 00:00:00. So somewhere in the file process, the chapters are not being converted. Done a lot of DVD's and never seen this before. Upgrading from 1.6.14 to 1.6.15 did not solve the problem.

Another issue I am having is that mediainfo is reporting the "aspect ratio" as 16/9 but also reports the "original aspect ratio" as 2.35:1 (the correct aspect ratio is 16:9). When I play the file in WMC the box is widescreen 16:9 but there are black bars at the top and bottom and the picture is squished to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Never seen this before either.

"Breaking Bad" Season 1 Discs 1, 2, 3 NTSC DVD USA

No problems with chapters here but similar problems with aspect ratio only now the original aspect ratio is being reported as 4:3 so WMC forces black bars at the top and bottom and shrinks the image to fit.

There is no real error in the file making process other than these glitches, so let me know if I need to submit anything.

[BlackDragon24]

A picture is worth a thousand words...highlighted areas of interest, and posted an image of the episode that WMC has crunched down into the 2.35:1 aspect ratio:

[jelockwood]

An amazingly large number of commercial DVDs have some sort of error on them. I have seen things like the telecine pattern (on NTSC DVDs) being broken several times during a film due to it having been edited after the telecine conversion was done, I have seen menus take you to the wrong choice, I have seen a menu choice incorrectly disable the sound track, I have seen numerous examples of the original video having time code errors - something you don't normally notice on a DVD because the IFO file contains time codes which override the original video stream time codes, etc. etc. etc.

In this case it might be that the original video was set incorrectly to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. As this is a DVD of a TV show it is pretty much certain both from experience and what we can both see in your example capture that it should be a 16:9 aspect ratio, only feature films are typically shot in 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Even a feature film shot at 2.35:1 should not have 2.35:1 encoded in to the original video as DVDs don't use that.

Usually the most common error is that the original video stream either has the 16:9 anamorphic flag set when it should not, or vice versa, meaning that the VOB file is shown as 16:9 when it should be 4:3 or vice versa, your case is not one I have seen before. The anamorphic flag is literally just that, a single bit saying stretch it widescreen (or not). IFO files always override what is in the original video stream, so even if it is wrong in the video stream, if it is right in the IFO then the DVD as a DVD can be played without a problem.

As your case is different to a simple fullscreen/widescreen cunfusion I am not sure the following will help, but it is worth a try.

If you had a Mac I would be suggesting any easy method using MyDVDedit to fix the video stream aspect ratio in the VOB files in a copy of the VIDEO_TS folder. However as you are using Windows (it appears) you could try doing a similar fix using DVDPatcher a free utility. Again you need to do this on a copy of the VIDEO_TS. If you are successfull in fixing the problem in the copy of the VIDEO_TS then you would run the modified VIDEO_TS through MakeMKV.

You could also try playing the VOB file as a VOB file (not a DVD) in VLC before and after.

You can get DVDPatcher here http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVDPatcher

Note: You would still want the DVD in its IFO files to define the TV show as 16:9

UPDATE: Actually thinking a bit further, it is possible on a DVD to define a widescreen (i.e. 16:9) video to be other than a simple anamorphic image (which is normally the best choice). you can have other options like pan-and-scan, or letterboxed as well as basic 16:9. On a Mac MyDVDedit can change this also and on Windows I think either IFOedit or PGCedit might be choices.

[BlackDragon24]

An amazingly large number of commercial DVDs have some sort of error on them. I have seen things like the telecine pattern (on NTSC DVDs) being broken several times during a film due to it having been edited after the telecine conversion was done, I have seen menus take you to the wrong choice, I have seen a menu choice incorrectly disable the sound track, I have seen numerous examples of the original video having time code errors - something you don't normally notice on a DVD because the IFO file contains time codes which override the original video stream time codes, etc. etc. etc.

In this case it might be that the original video was set incorrectly to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. As this is a DVD of a TV show it is pretty much certain both from experience and what we can both see in your example capture that it should be a 16:9 aspect ratio, only feature films are typically shot in 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Even a feature film shot at 2.35:1 should not have 2.35:1 encoded in to the original video as DVDs don't use that.

Usually the most common error is that the original video stream either has the 16:9 anamorphic flag set when it should not, or vice versa, meaning that the VOB file is shown as 16:9 when it should be 4:3 or vice versa, your case is not one I have seen before. The anamorphic flag is literally just that, a single bit saying stretch it widescreen (or not). IFO files always override what is in the original video stream, so even if it is wrong in the video stream, if it is right in the IFO then the DVD as a DVD can be played without a problem.

As your case is different to a simple fullscreen/widescreen cunfusion I am not sure the following will help, but it is worth a try.

If you had a Mac I would be suggesting any easy method using MyDVDedit to fix the video stream aspect ratio in the VOB files in a copy of the VIDEO_TS folder. However as you are using Windows (it appears) you could try doing a similar fix using DVDPatcher a free utility. Again you need to do this on a copy of the VIDEO_TS. If you are successfull in fixing the problem in the copy of the VIDEO_TS then you would run the modified VIDEO_TS through MakeMKV.

You could also try playing the VOB file as a VOB file (not a DVD) in VLC before and after.

You can get DVDPatcher here http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVDPatcher

Note: You would still want the DVD in its IFO files to define the TV show as 16:9

UPDATE: Actually thinking a bit further, it is possible on a DVD to define a widescreen (i.e. 16:9) video to be other than a simple anamorphic image (which is normally the best choice). you can have other options like pan-and-scan, or letterboxed as well as basic 16:9. On a Mac MyDVDedit can change this also and on Windows I think either IFOedit or PGCedit might be choices.

For my purposes the flag for aspect ratio is not really an issue, because everything I rip down from DVD eventually gets de-interlaced and re-encoded to whatever resolution and aspect ratio I want...I can just manually stretch the image back to what it should be before I encode it and it looks fine. I pointed this out more so Mike could see it and possibly fix the bug in the program...but thanks for your help!

What is troubling me more is the chapters. Makemkv sees the chapters on the disc but does not assign them correctly in the output file. This most likely is a bug in makemkv, because the chapters work fine on the DVD in a normal DVD player....and FWIW, the image looks correct on both widescreen and standard TV's, suggesting a bug in makemkv as well.

[BlackDragon24]

bump

[BlackDragon24]

Mike help me!

Or tell me what I can do to help you help me.

[mike admin]

There's nothing one can do - aspect ratio is siored in two places - IFO and mpeg headers, and on DVD IFO settings always overwrites what's stored in mpeg header. MakeMKV puts correct aspect ratio from IFO to MKV header, but many programs ignore it there and use data from mpeg header. Generally one can't patch mpeg header without reencoding.

[BlackDragon24]

There's nothing one can do - aspect ratio is siored in two places - IFO and mpeg headers, and on DVD IFO settings always overwrites what's stored in mpeg header. MakeMKV puts correct aspect ratio from IFO to MKV header, but many programs ignore it there and use data from mpeg header. Generally one can't patch mpeg header without reencoding.

OK good to know, I re-encode most of my stuff anyways.

Can you address the issue where makeMKV sees the correct chapters on the DVD but does not write them correctly to the output file? Thanks!

[jelockwood]

There's nothing one can do - aspect ratio is siored in two places - IFO and mpeg headers, and on DVD IFO settings always overwrites what's stored in mpeg header. MakeMKV puts correct aspect ratio from IFO to MKV header, but many programs ignore it there and use data from mpeg header. Generally one can't patch mpeg header without reencoding.

That's why I suggested using either MyDVDEdit (for Mac) or DVD Patcher (for Windows) as both can patch the MPEG headers without reencoding the video. This has to be done before converting to an MKV though.

[BlackDragon24]

There's nothing one can do - aspect ratio is siored in two places - IFO and mpeg headers, and on DVD IFO settings always overwrites what's stored in mpeg header. MakeMKV puts correct aspect ratio from IFO to MKV header, but many programs ignore it there and use data from mpeg header. Generally one can't patch mpeg header without reencoding.

OK good to know, I re-encode most of my stuff anyways.

Can you address the issue where makeMKV sees the correct chapters on the DVD but does not write them correctly to the output file? Thanks!

Gonna bump her one more time so mike can see it when he comes back on

FWIW I was able to use chaptergrabber to export the chapters from the dvd folder as an .xml file and then muxed that into the appropriate mkv with mkvmerge, it is just a PITA to do this for every episode.

[therealjoeblow]

I am having this problem on a *number* of discs from the Warner Archive Collection (with the bad aspect ratio, where Widescreen 16:9 movies are encoded on the disc with 4:3 aspect ratio, but display correctly when played as a DVD and have the wrong A/R as a .mkv).

Would it be possible for you to add the functionality of DVDPatcher to MakeMKV - ie, just right click on the MPEG2 video source in the GUI and something like "set aspect ratio to 16:9), then do the patching on the fly as you mux it?

Many thanks
The REAL Joe

[mike admin]

Would it be possible for you to add the functionality of DVDPatcher to MakeMKV - ie, just right click on the MPEG2 video source in the GUI and something like "set aspect ratio to 16:9), then do the patching on the fly as you mux it?

This is quite possible, request noted.

[therealjoeblow]

Would it be possible for you to add the functionality of DVDPatcher to MakeMKV - ie, just right click on the MPEG2 video source in the GUI and something like "set aspect ratio to 16:9), then do the patching on the fly as you mux it?

This is quite possible, request noted.

Thank you Mike, that would be excellent!

The REAL Joe

[paulster]

Would it be possible for you to add the functionality of DVDPatcher to MakeMKV - ie, just right click on the MPEG2 video source in the GUI and something like "set aspect ratio to 16:9), then do the patching on the fly as you mux it?

I'll second that. It would be really useful to have a context menu option to force the aspect ratio to 16:9 or 4:3 or leave what's in the header for badly authored discs.

If you don't want to add an additional context menu option you could always take what's in the header and write that into the stream, overriding what's already in the stream to avoid these problems altogether since the header should theoretically always be correct, but that would take away a bit of potentially useful flexibility.

I have a few discs I've noticed this on and it would be great to ensure that the resultant MKV is as well authored as possible in spite of what the studios have churned out.

[BlackDragon24]

FWIW I think I have figured out what was going on here. I see a similar problem using "Dexter" DVD's and some others from Showtime.

IF I make a complete backup from the disc and extract the chapter information from the IFO files, I can get the correct .xml files necessary for epidsode chapters in an mkv file. The correct IFO files are definitely on the disc. There are, however, a couple of them that either are blank or only give 1 chapter at 00:00:00.

The frustrating thing, and Mike this is where you come in, is that the program makemkv is actually reading the IFO headers correctly when it reads the disc and presents the titles that are available for ripping to mkv. But for whatever reason, once the actual mkv writing process starts, it defaults back to the IFO file that only has the single 00:00:00 entry.

So the short answer is that I can work around this, but there is definitely something wrong with the way makemkv is making the files. It makes no sense to me that it can read the correct IFO when decrypting the disc but then can't read it when writing the mkv.

I'd be happy to provide examples if necessary....see my earlier posts in this thread for images. Basically the same thing with Tudors and Dexter.

Mike, if you are out there, lemme know what I can do to help. I have found a workaround but it certainly isn't ideal....requiring several more steps. Would much rather have MakeMKV do this properly.