What's the consensus on this?
Do people generally crop and then scale the image to fit a 4x3 or 16x9 frame in HandBrake, or do they crop in HandBrake and then let the playback software (VLC, PLEX, etc.) handle the scaling?
In other words, if you're scaling up by less than 1% because of black lines on the edge of the frame, is it better to let HB do that, or to wait and let your playback software handle it?
Thoughts?
when to crop . . .
Re: when to crop . . .
Let your playback software scale. Why waste the storage for something that can be done perfectly well on playback.
Re: when to crop . . .
Hm . . .makes sense. But what if the cropping affects the aspect ratio? For instance, if I crop off a lot from one side, then when the playback software scales to fill the frame, there will be some slight distortion, correct? I ran into that problem trying to encode some old TV programs that had significant black borders on one side. Maybe it's just such a small difference - or is a problem for so few programs - that people generally don't care?
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Deleted User 11865
Re: when to crop . . .
Non-broken playback software/devices will be able to maintain the correct AR when scaling. There are a few broken players out there (mostly TVs and Blu-Ray players); if you have one of those, then you may want to not crop (or get a better player).
Re: when to crop . . .
I'm using PLEX - I could run a quick test with it, but do you happen to know off the top of your head how well that works for this purpose?
Re: when to crop . . .
I have no problems with Plex properly scaling cropped video, with both Anamorphic and Non-Anamorphic sources.
Re: when to crop . . .
Hmmm . . . let me post some screenshots, and maybe someone can explain why I'm confused . . .
I have a DVD of PAL material in 4x3. I bring it into Handbrake. The material is old animation so it needs quite a bit of cropping. I use these settings:
I'm using "Loose" because the anamorphic guide on this site explained that "None" doesn't allow flexibility in scaling, and "Strict" doesn't allow the compression to work efficiently. So I start with the "Loose" setting. Cropping 10 pixels off the vertical gives us 566, but that doesn't divide cleanly by the modulus of 16, so the setting automatically goes to the next closest value: 560, and adjusts the horizontal to match.
When I bring the resulting file into PLEX, I get this:
The problem is, it's the wrong shape by a small, but noticeable amount. This is an animation disc, so it's not as obvious, but I first noticed this on a live-action, 4x3 PAL DVD. With real actors and everyday objects, I could clearly see the distortion. And it's on this material as well, as you can see when I change the view mode in PLEX, like this:
To fill the 4x3 frame, PLEX has to widen the image.
So, I'd love to not scale, and just leave it up to the playback software, as Rogue23 suggested, except that I can't seem to get the right image out of HB for PLEX to know what to do with it. I can't make 4x3 the default view mode in PLEX, because there's plenty of 16x9 material in my library. But I'd like to avoid the 17 clicks of the remote required to set the 4x3 aspect every time I play one of these episodes . . .
More than that, I'd just like to know why it's happening this way so I can be sure I understand the anamorphic settings in HB. The guide on the site was exhaustive and well-written, but I couldn't figure out where I'm going wrong . . .
Any thoughts?
I have a DVD of PAL material in 4x3. I bring it into Handbrake. The material is old animation so it needs quite a bit of cropping. I use these settings:
I'm using "Loose" because the anamorphic guide on this site explained that "None" doesn't allow flexibility in scaling, and "Strict" doesn't allow the compression to work efficiently. So I start with the "Loose" setting. Cropping 10 pixels off the vertical gives us 566, but that doesn't divide cleanly by the modulus of 16, so the setting automatically goes to the next closest value: 560, and adjusts the horizontal to match.
When I bring the resulting file into PLEX, I get this:
The problem is, it's the wrong shape by a small, but noticeable amount. This is an animation disc, so it's not as obvious, but I first noticed this on a live-action, 4x3 PAL DVD. With real actors and everyday objects, I could clearly see the distortion. And it's on this material as well, as you can see when I change the view mode in PLEX, like this:
To fill the 4x3 frame, PLEX has to widen the image.
So, I'd love to not scale, and just leave it up to the playback software, as Rogue23 suggested, except that I can't seem to get the right image out of HB for PLEX to know what to do with it. I can't make 4x3 the default view mode in PLEX, because there's plenty of 16x9 material in my library. But I'd like to avoid the 17 clicks of the remote required to set the 4x3 aspect every time I play one of these episodes . . .
More than that, I'd just like to know why it's happening this way so I can be sure I understand the anamorphic settings in HB. The guide on the site was exhaustive and well-written, but I couldn't figure out where I'm going wrong . . .
Any thoughts?
Re: when to crop . . .
OK, I've figured it out.
If I don't crop anything, then it's easy to see that I can get a perfect image out of HandBrake as long as I use a custom anamorphic setting of 750x576. This is a ratio of 1.302:1, not the 1.3333 I was expecting. The brief research I've done online is enough tell me that hits is just the way it is when working with PAL.
If I need to crop, things get complicated because of the modulus. In other words, you may crop 10 pixels off the vertical, but your output can't just shrink by 10 pixels unless you want to seriously cripple the compressor.
So here's what I did:
1) Open my file, go to picture settings, set the anamorphic to "Custom" and turn all the cropping OFF.
2) The output height should be 720x576, which is the source resolution of the DVD.
3) Set "Keep Aspect Ratio" to UNCHECKED, and adjust the display width to 750. This corrects the horizontal distortion I was describing without affecting the image in the vertical.
4) Now RE-CHECK "Keep Aspect Ratio", and turn on the auto-crop.
5) If auto-crop only shaves off a pixel or two, then I would just leave things as they are. But in my case, the footage was very old animation which had a large black border. So to minimize the scaling done by Handbrake, I reduce the vertical resolution of the output. This has to happen in increments of 16 due to the modulus, but because you STARTED with a correct aspect ratio, and the aspect is now locked, you won't lose those correct proportions.
So that solved my problem. It was really not so much a lack of understanding about aspect ratio, it was more that I had to figure out what order to turn things on and off in HandBrake in order to maintain the aspect.
If I don't crop anything, then it's easy to see that I can get a perfect image out of HandBrake as long as I use a custom anamorphic setting of 750x576. This is a ratio of 1.302:1, not the 1.3333 I was expecting. The brief research I've done online is enough tell me that hits is just the way it is when working with PAL.
If I need to crop, things get complicated because of the modulus. In other words, you may crop 10 pixels off the vertical, but your output can't just shrink by 10 pixels unless you want to seriously cripple the compressor.
So here's what I did:
1) Open my file, go to picture settings, set the anamorphic to "Custom" and turn all the cropping OFF.
2) The output height should be 720x576, which is the source resolution of the DVD.
3) Set "Keep Aspect Ratio" to UNCHECKED, and adjust the display width to 750. This corrects the horizontal distortion I was describing without affecting the image in the vertical.
4) Now RE-CHECK "Keep Aspect Ratio", and turn on the auto-crop.
5) If auto-crop only shaves off a pixel or two, then I would just leave things as they are. But in my case, the footage was very old animation which had a large black border. So to minimize the scaling done by Handbrake, I reduce the vertical resolution of the output. This has to happen in increments of 16 due to the modulus, but because you STARTED with a correct aspect ratio, and the aspect is now locked, you won't lose those correct proportions.
So that solved my problem. It was really not so much a lack of understanding about aspect ratio, it was more that I had to figure out what order to turn things on and off in HandBrake in order to maintain the aspect.