Some Requests
Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 12:30 am
I've been using Handbrake for a month now, after using Nero Recode for the last year.
However, I'm still going back to Recode to do around half my movie encodes. This is why:
Many DVD sources are over 16:9 ratios - often 2.35:1. Nearly all HD widescreen monitors are 16:9. I always prefer to watch my movies as big as poss, so to avoid the black bars top and bottom, I crop the movie at playback. That is, if it's possible - if it's going out to a TV, it's not - black bars will have to stay, unless the TV itself has a cropping function. All way too complicated and such a waste of encoding space for those pixels at the side you never see. I could use that space to get better quality for the image I do see.
So I ALWAYS crop movies to 16:9.
Seems like it would be a frequently-used and obvious feature, but it's a real pain to do:
Once I know the height of the black bars I'm cropping off in the source, I need to work out the width of the final movie, in order for it to be 16:9, taking into account the PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio). Now this is were it gets tricky. It's easier in Recode, but still a pain. In addition to the live preview in Recode, to facilitate visual cropping, it at least gives me a calculation of the cropped size taking into account the PAR . Handbrake doesn't - I have to get out my calculator and work out the PAR. Then I do the "Pixels to crop off each side = Original width - (cropped height*1.78)" calculation.
What I would LOVE, is for HB to have a "Restrict Crop to <16:9 | 16:10 | 4:3> " dropdown option, where it automatically takes the vertical crop of the black areas top and bottom, adds a little to make it a multiple of 16, then, taking the PAR into account, work out what the nearest horizontal crop values need to be to crop to the chosen aspect ratio, whilst maintaining the horizontal size as a multiple of 16.
To show my appreciation, I would happily make a donation equivalent to what I paid for my Nero Recode ($30) if someone could make this happen. Not to mention, expound HB's ease-of-use to everyone I know... oh hang on, there's just a couple of other things...
However, I'm still going back to Recode to do around half my movie encodes. This is why:
Many DVD sources are over 16:9 ratios - often 2.35:1. Nearly all HD widescreen monitors are 16:9. I always prefer to watch my movies as big as poss, so to avoid the black bars top and bottom, I crop the movie at playback. That is, if it's possible - if it's going out to a TV, it's not - black bars will have to stay, unless the TV itself has a cropping function. All way too complicated and such a waste of encoding space for those pixels at the side you never see. I could use that space to get better quality for the image I do see.
So I ALWAYS crop movies to 16:9.
Seems like it would be a frequently-used and obvious feature, but it's a real pain to do:
Once I know the height of the black bars I'm cropping off in the source, I need to work out the width of the final movie, in order for it to be 16:9, taking into account the PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio). Now this is were it gets tricky. It's easier in Recode, but still a pain. In addition to the live preview in Recode, to facilitate visual cropping, it at least gives me a calculation of the cropped size taking into account the PAR . Handbrake doesn't - I have to get out my calculator and work out the PAR. Then I do the "Pixels to crop off each side = Original width - (cropped height*1.78)" calculation.
What I would LOVE, is for HB to have a "Restrict Crop to <16:9 | 16:10 | 4:3> " dropdown option, where it automatically takes the vertical crop of the black areas top and bottom, adds a little to make it a multiple of 16, then, taking the PAR into account, work out what the nearest horizontal crop values need to be to crop to the chosen aspect ratio, whilst maintaining the horizontal size as a multiple of 16.
To show my appreciation, I would happily make a donation equivalent to what I paid for my Nero Recode ($30) if someone could make this happen. Not to mention, expound HB's ease-of-use to everyone I know... oh hang on, there's just a couple of other things...