aspect ratio problem

[darkphader]

On the DVD that ships with Nick Lowe's Quiet Please collection (2 CD's and the DVD) the video for the main track is squashed in on the sides. It should be 720x480 but isn't. Neither VLC, mplayer, totem nor my Blu-ray player will play the mkv correctly as is, although all play the DVD just fine. Used a couple of different versions with 1.8.0 being the latest.

Code: Select all

Track information
Type: Video
Codec: Mpeg2
Resolution: 720x480
Aspect ratio: 4:3
Frame rate: 29.97 (30000/1001)

From the mkv headers:

Code: Select all

Video pixel width: 720
Video pixel height: 480
Video display width: 640
Video display height: 480

If I could convince MakeMKV that the Aspect ratio is not 4:3 it might work OK.
Editing the mkv headers after the fact has no effect on playback.

Is this a bug or something I'm doing wrong?
How to fix?

Thanks,

Chris

[Developer58]

This is a bug.

I have exactly the same, but with a different DVD.

Very annoying.

[mike admin]

This was discussed here before.
On DVD aspect ratio is stored in two places - in the MPEG stream itself and in IFO headers. Rarely, these values do not match. MakeMKV doesn't change MPEG stream and puts aspect ratio from MPEG stream into MKV container for consistency. You surely can edit MKV headers afterwards and change aspect ratio in container, but most players would ignore it and use one from MPEG instead. There are tools to change MPEG headers but for that you would need to demux MKV file, patch MPEG headers, and mux MKV again.

All of this only happens if the DVD disc was encoded incorrectly in a first place.