ID4 (independence Day) DVD conversion oddity

[OldTimerToo]

I am converting my DVD collection for playing on an external hard drive through the WD TV Live box. Most widescreen DVDs convert with no problems as long as they are not letterboxed -- I've posted a separate thread to request help with those.

I just converted Independence Day and while the format is set up for widescreen TVs, the conversion came out in Full Screen compressed width. While I can juggle the setting on the television for playback, I really would prefer that the conversion work properly so I don't have to fiddle with any settings when I switch between shows and movies.

Any ideas on how to set MakeMKV to correctly convert this DVD will be appreciated.

[ndjamena]

I had that problem with the new He-Man. The mpeg2 stream must have had a different aspect ratio to the DVDs IFO, MKVPropEdit or the MMG Header Editor can change the aspect ratio of the Matroska container. They're both part of MKVToolNix.

for PAL:
MKVPropEdit -e track:v1 -s display-width=1024 -s display-height=576 "FileName.mkv"

for NTSC:
MKVPropEdit -e track:v1 -s display-width=854 -s display-height=480 "FileName.mkv"

NTSC width might be 853... Although I see no reason PAL dimension won't work for both.

This fix is specific to the current MKV though, if you remux it into a different container it may revert back to full screen. To fix the stream permanently you'd need to edit it with an MPEG2 header editor.

[OldTimerToo]

That worked, but not as expected. The display size changed, but by adding black space. It did nothing for the actual image. Thanks, anyway. I'm going to explore the toolkit further to see what I can find with respect to this particular problem.

[ndjamena]

What on earth are you playing it with?

-Edit- Never mind, I just played the first episode of He-Man in Windows Media Player and got the same thing. It seems to still be obeying the MPEG2 stream aspect ratio AND it's obeying the MKV header info as well, in the stupidest way possible. VLC, WDTV and any decent player shouldn't have that problem.

[OldTimerToo]

I'm using Windoze Media Player with added codecs (it could be a codec problem, maybe) to test the file. Then I use a WDTV Live box and an external hard drive. I should have realized that Windows can't do much of anything correctly. LOL

The DVD itself reads fine and translated fine on a Toshiba with a built-in DVD player. If I feed the data through Handbrake, it wants to decode as 1.78 aspect ratio, 720 x 480 trimming 58 pixels from the top, 54 from the bottom and 4 from each side. That's if I want to end up with an MP4 file (which I don't, since it doesn't carry subtitles).

Hm. Verry Interesting...

I moved the modified files to the WDTV Live box and it read the modifications -- resulting in a very strange output. That gives me hope that I can modify a letterboxed file with the toolkit and the WDTV Live box will display it properly. I'm not sure about the subtitles, so I'll have to see what I can do there.

I'm rerunning the disc MakeMKV so that I'm not working with modified files (silly me, I didn't keep original MakeMKV output files (sigh).

Okay, I've rerun the MakeMKV on the DVD and produced two unmodified files (one is the extended version and the other is the theatrical release. I moved these to the WDTV Live Device and proceeded to play the files with no problems. Then I switched to a copy of Galaxy Quest and it was compressed - top to bottom. I check the WDTV Live settings and it was set to "normal" for display. I switched to Widescreen (which is the correct setting for HD tvs, and Galaxy Quest played back normally.

I then checked the new copies of Independence Day and they were compressed side-to-side. I checked the files that I had modified with only the display output -- with this command line: MKVPropEdit -e track:v1 -s display-width=854 -s display-height=480 "FileName.mkv" -- and it played back with no problems. Likewise, the subtitles were positioned correctly and everything is fine.

So, with Independence Day, the display-width parameter has to be changed for it to display properly on a WDTV Live system set for widescreen. All of the files play without having to fiddle with the screen settings.

Now to tackle the letterboxed files to see what modifications need to be made to have them display properly and to see if that impacts the subtitles. I'm going to tackle The Abyss for this project, since it is not available on DVD, except for letterboxed versions.

[Krawk]

Sorry about bumping an old topic but I am not really seeing a solution here for Independence Day? What did we ever end up doing?
As we have noted, playing the actual disc does show up correctly with the 2.35:1 AR. Playing the mkv file though requires multiple extra steps to get it to work correctly.

Clean and dirty I was able to use mkvtoolnix to change the display width from 640 to 854. Doing this does allow the video to play in MPC or VLC as it should look. Recoding the file with Handbrake though, will I see additional issues? Should I switch it back to default and try messing with one of the anamorphic values in handbrake to force this?

I do not recall this issue with DvdFab but that program creates semi-corrupted mkvs. Perhaps Dvdfab does the AR correctly because it reads the IFO file?