Right aspect ratio, but zoomed out?

[Prez808]

Hello, I am ripping some movies off of a DVD. It is the "Carry On" collection, so there are 2 movies per disc. The original aspect ratio appears to be 16x9 or possibly it was matted that way. The second feature appeared squished as a 4x3 image. I adjusted the aspect ratio and now everything appears on screen without any distortion as a 16x9 matted image. Makemkv reports the ratio as 4x3 on disc.

The first feature is not distorted, but is smaller than the "fixed" 2nd feature. I can zoom in with software and it looks fine, although a little is cut off the top and bottom. Is there any way to fix this issue? I tried dvdpatcher and changed the ratio to 16x9 but distorted it too much. So in other words, the aspect ratio is correct, but smaller than it should be.

Attached as screenshots showing better what I mean. The first is the correct AR, but small on the left side and stretched to 16x10 (16x9 cuts off top and bottom a little) and the 2nd image is the other feature where the aspect ratio is compressed to a 4x3 image, with the right capture fixed to 16x9 without any distortion.

Thanks!

correct ar but small.jpg (1.14 MiB) Viewed 15503 times

wrong ar but fixed.jpg (1.69 MiB) Viewed 15503 times

[Woodstock]

Welcome to the world of anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic.

DVDs are basically 720x480, and to get 16x9 there are a few choices. Shrink the height and leave the width alone, or leave both alone but tell the player that the pixels are wider than they are high. The former is the way it was originally done, the latter is what more recent disks do. Sometimes they have both on the same disk.

I don't worry about it because I can have handbrake fix it when it does other things like removing the interlace and telecine. But you can also tell some players to apply the correction manual, if they don't pick it up on their own.

[Prez808]

I just find it so odd that a disc would be produced with distortion. Then have another movie, shot the same year from the same series in a different format. So then the best way is to just zoom in/crop the image with the player software instead of attempting to correct it?

[Woodstock]

There are ways to "fix" the issue, but it comes down to choices the disk author made. There are two places on a DVD that the aspect ratio can be stored, and they both should match... But "should" doesn't mean "does". MakeMKV chooses to use one of them, which may be incorrect.

Someone should pop in in the next day or so with how to change the MKV header to manipulate the AR to be correct. My way of fixing it involves handbrake, as I mentioned before, because it will make sure the ARs match up.

[Grauhaar]

To fix this, use "MKVToolNIX GUI" (part of the mkvmerge toolset), load the created MKV file, select the video track, go into the lower right corner to the "Video Properties" and select in the "Set Aspect Ratio" selection "4/3" or "16/9" and remuxx the file.

Your first screenshot is 4:3 Letterbox, so select 4:3, the other is authored as 4:3 but is in real 16:9, so use the "16/9" settings. This is the cause of wrong authoring of older DVDs. The settings are in the IFO file and also in the VOB file(s) in each MPEG header. MakeMKV uses the VOB files.

[Grauhaar]

Small update:
Make sure that the VLC settings for "Video->Aspect Radio" and "Video-> Crop" are set to "Default" to avoid that VLC makes some strange things.

[Prez808]

Yes everything is set to default. Did a remux to 16/9 and this is the result:

correct ar stretched to 16x9.jpg (1.14 MiB) Viewed 15463 times

It got stretched.

Attempted another remux and this time changed display width/height to 1920x1080. The result seems a bit more passable. What do you think? edit: My mind is playing tricks on me. I think I just want it to work. haha

crrect ar on left remuxed to 1920x1080 on right.jpg (1.16 MiB) Viewed 15463 times

[Grauhaar]

Why did you change the display size to 1920x1080? This is the resolution for Blu-rays and not for DVDs. This should always be set to the native medium resolution. I have never had problems to change the aspect ratio to the correct value with MKVtoolNIX. VLC displays it with the native resolution in the VLC window. I can also switch to VLC Fullscreen and the AR still match. Make sure that the "Video -> Always fit Window" is set, otherwise the movie is shown as something like "centered" on the screen. Also leave the "Video -> Crop" to "Default".

You can better see the original disc AR if you do not use VLC in fullscreen mode. In this case VLC opens the window with the native resolution and only with the included black bars. And do not try to resize the window with the mouse, this overwrites the AR settings. Let VLC do the job.
To get this working, start with a small VLC window by resizing it and hold the shift key during close of VLC to save this starting window resolution. Now on the next start VLC should start with this small window size. If you now open a file, the window is expanded to the native resolution size of the file and only with the included bars and not with the fullscreen filling bars.

I'm still unsure due to the black bars on each side what is the original AR from the DVD. The initial first left picture can be 4:3 letterbox (16:9 movie with top and buttom black bars), but can also native 16:9 anamorph. But due to the fullscreen mode, there are black bars all over there. The right pictures shows always a streched picture.

The left picture is what? Playing the DVD with VLC? It shows the correct AR. And the right strectched picture is after the remux and AR change? But the second picture looks like the first one.

[Prez808]

The left side of both images are the same rip with all defaults set. The right side on the top image is stretched by VLC adjusting Video settings and on the bottom image is the original file remuxed to 1920x1080. I only did it just to see how it would look like. The original source mkv was not deleted. I have also checked and playback of the disc through vlc is the same as playback of the mkv file in vlc. No difference in respective aspect ratio. I still prefer the 4x3 with big margins. It is matted properly, just small.

Ultimately, these files will be placed on my server and use Kodi for playback.