Resolution auto-detection?

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musicalfruit
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Joined: Mon May 07, 2007 2:59 am

Resolution auto-detection?

Post by musicalfruit »

Hi,

How does Handbrake detect the default resolution to set a compressed file at? On a 2.35:1 movie, it set the file resolution at 720x400, which resulted in black bars. When I used another tool (Nero Recode), it correctly compressed the movie as 720x304, resulting in a movie without any black bars.

Which program did it correctly?

Thanks.
deckeda
Enlightened
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Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:38 am

Post by deckeda »

Question: Can you clarify please "it set the file resolution at 720x400" --- was that the Output size or the Anamorphic Output size?

In other words, did you choose anamorphic encoding and if so was 720x400 what the size was when played back?
musicalfruit
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon May 07, 2007 2:59 am

Post by musicalfruit »

It was not anamorphic. The resulting outputted MP4 plays at 720x400 in VLC (both resolution and display resolution).

I ran the same DVD through Recode and the resulting MP4 plays at 720x304 in VLC.

Thanks.
deckeda
Enlightened
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Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:38 am

Post by deckeda »

OK, you have a 2.35:1 source, and if it's at all recent, that DVD is most likely anamorphic. In other words they probably didn't shrink the whole image and postage-stamp the poor thing onto the DVD.

So I'd do a fresh Handbrake job (been looking for an excuse to use that phrase, thanks) on that DVD and this time choose Anamorphic. You shouldn't need to touch (custom) cropping at all to get rid of black bars --- just let the automatic cropping do its thing, but I don't have your DVD here so I can't say for sure.

It'll still probably make a 720x400 or whatever file but when you play it back it should be something more like 853x358, to use an example I often get from 2.35:1 sources.

But understand by "no black bars" I'm referring to what it should look like when played back on Quicktime or VLC --- NOT the TV necessarily. This is because a 2.35:1 movie is too wide for a widescreen TV to display accurately without black bars unless the sides are allowed to run off the edges of the screen. HDTV --- 16:9 --- is only 1.78:1. Come to think of it, your 720x400 you got is a ratio of 1.8:1, darn close to filling a widescreen TV everywhere without bars, I would expect?

I actually had something bizarre happen last week where I ripped the wrong title set from a DVD, encoded it and the discovered the image wasn't as wide of an aspect ratio as it should be, but wasn't squished together either --- it was somewhere between 4:3 and less than the original's 2.35:1, the result being the sides of the image were simply cut off, missing despite never adjusting the crop values. It was like a sick combination of fake widescreen and pan-and-scan. I thought for sure I'd need therapy.

I have no clue if any of this helps at all.
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

What movie is this? If HB is encoding it at 720*400 it thinks the film is 1.78:1, not 2.35:1. Did you use custom cropping or let it autodetect?
musicalfruit
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon May 07, 2007 2:59 am

Post by musicalfruit »

The movie is The Prestige.

I just ran it through HB (H264/AAC @ 1425MB) and used the Anamorphic SAR option and did not enter a value for resolution or used the cropping option. Oddly, the resulting MP4 plays as 853x480 in QuickTime but VLC thinks it's 720x480 (both resolution and display resolution) though it appears to play it in the same sized window. Both played it with black bars.

It's not a huge deal. I guess if I want to get rid of the black bars, I can use something like Recode to see the actual display window size and then use those values in HB to manually set the resolution. I was just curious since HB seems to use a different method to set the resolution than tools like Recode or AutoGK.

Thanks.
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

from what you are saying, it seems like you have not enabled cropping to cut off the black bars from the top and bottom of your video.

i am not sure why VLC is still reporting the original DVD storage specs, but you have basically encoded using anamorphic setting and no cropping.

under "picture settings" click on "automatic" for cropping and it should crop out the black bars.
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

I've never encountered this before with any DVD. HB has always successfully auto-cropped down to aspect ratio for me...sure you don't have custom cropping enabled?

...and if you want to know why VLC reports 720*480 and not 854*480 for anamorphic encodes, read our documentation. It's not odd.
cbud
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Post by cbud »

jbrjake wrote:I've never encountered this before with any DVD. HB has always successfully auto-cropped down to aspect ratio for me...sure you don't have custom cropping enabled?

...and if you want to know why VLC reports 720*480 and not 854*480 for anamorphic encodes, read our documentation. It's not odd.
Auto-crop does not always work.

For example, with the movie Faces (John Cassavetes), I select the title, hit HB ATV preset, press encode, and my mp4 will have black bars on the side. If I select the title, hit the preset, open picture settings (touch nothing), close, and then hit encode, my mp4 has no black bars.
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