When to use/not use PAR?

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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Maury Markowitz
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When to use/not use PAR?

Post by Maury Markowitz »

I am trying to encode an animation, but I am mystified by the anamorphic option. The docs basically seem to suggest that it should always be turned on. But when I do this, the animation seems "squished" in the preview.

Am I correct in thinking that this option should only be turned on for non 4:3 sources? If so, shouldn't this be added to the "when not to use" section?

Maury
yacoub
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Post by yacoub »

The way I read the guide it seemed to say it should only be On if you plan to output to larger displays, so if viewing movies primarily on iPhone/iPod touch, turn Anamorphic PAR off. Strange it would be defaulted to On for Normal preset, no?

I would love more clarity on this feature as well.
Lant
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Post by Lant »

jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

?!

Why is it strange that PAR would be on for the Normal preset? Why *wouldn't* you want it on for normal encodes?

Also, there is not one place in the guide where I say it should only be used for outputting to larger displays. Please do not put words in my mouth. I mean, I start the damn thing off by telling you when *not* to use it. And those situations where it shouldn't be used -- the presets for them have it turned off. What is unclear about this?

Whether or not to use anamorphic with 4:3 is entirely dependent on how you view the movies. VLC will display them at 720*540 so yes it's useful there, but QuickTime will display at 640*480 so it's wasteful there.
Maury Markowitz
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Post by Maury Markowitz »

jbrjake wrote: Why is it strange that PAR would be on for the Normal preset? Why *wouldn't* you want it on for normal encodes?
What do you mean by "normal"? Normal TV signals? Normal DVD's of Bugs Bunny?

I'm fairly certain that PAR should be turned off in these cases. But the guide you produced doesn't say that. It says you should turn it off for the iPod or iPhone. The guide is simply not clear. That's why I'm asking; if i was clear, I wouldn't be asking.

DVD's may or may not be encoded using anamorphic frames. If the DVD is not anamorphic, like a TV show, should it be turned on or off? Does it make any difference at all in that case? When I turn it on circles are no longer circular in the Picture Setting preview, which suggests it should not be turned on. But the output file doesn't seem any different when I experimented with it.

So, should it be on or off in these cases? Or does it make no difference at all? In any case, the guide needs to say something about this.
jbrjake wrote: Also, there is not one place in the guide where I say it should only be used for outputting to larger displays.
The guide says not to use it on the ipod or iphone. Those have small displays. It didn't confuse me, but I can see why it might confuse others.
jbrjake wrote: Whether or not to use anamorphic with 4:3 is entirely dependent on how you view the movies. VLC will display them at 720*540 so yes it's useful there, but QuickTime will display at 640*480 so it's wasteful there.
Why would QuickTime display a movie at 640*480 that's recorded at 720*540? Do you mean "QuickTime showing the movie on a system with a 640x480 physical display"?

Maury
Maury Markowitz
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Post by Maury Markowitz »

Lant wrote:If you want info on this see http://handbrake.m0k.org/trac/wiki/AnamorphicGuide
Thanks for the "help" Lank. You think maybe that was the guide that I was referring to when I said that the guide should mention this?



Maury
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

Maury Markowitz wrote: What do you mean by "normal"?
Um I mean exactly what I wrote in the preset's description when I created it: "HandBrake's normal, default settings."
I'm fairly certain that PAR should be turned off in these cases. But the guide you produced doesn't say that. It says you should turn it off for the iPod or iPhone. The guide is simply not clear. That's why I'm asking; if i was clear, I wouldn't be asking.
So because you're assuming something, and the guide doesn't confirm your assumptions, the guide is unclear?
DVD's may or may not be encoded using anamorphic frames.
Simply untrue. All DVDs are anamorphic. When have you *ever* watched a 720*480 frame being displayed?!
The guide says not to use it on the ipod or iphone. Those have small displays.
But the guide doesn't say not to use them on the iPod because they have small displays! It's about the limits of the device. You can't put 720*480 video on an iPod because it *won't let you*.
Why would QuickTime display a movie at 640*480 that's recorded at 720*540?
Learn how to read.. I did *not* say the video would be recorded at 720*540. Not at *all*. I said it would be *displayed* at 720*540 in VLC and would be *displayed* at 640*480 in QuickTime. You obviously don't even understand what anamorphic does, so I can see why Lant would assume you hadn't read the guide. Anyone who had should understand that anamorphic is about storing at 1.5:1 and then displaying at different aspect ratios tailored for the content. Do the math. 720*540 and 640*480 are both 4:3 aspect ratios. Either are valid display dimensions. The transformation matrix used for QT goes down, the sar used for VLC goes up.
yacoub
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Post by yacoub »

The guide I read a while back over on iLounge said to use a resolution size of no more than 640x(autofill is usually like 352) for iPod touch or iPhone since higher res is just wasted on the 480x320 display. So if it's saying to set the resolution that logically means PAR must be disabled since enabling PAR prevents the user from setting the resolution. So you can imagine the confusion of now reading your guide and comments in this thread that seem to say PAR should be enabled for encoding widescreen DVD movies for iPod/iPhone use. This is also strange because a larger resolution takes up more space and if the higher res isn't going to be useful anyway, it's doubly wasted on a device where storage space is so limited.

If I give you a scenario maybe you can tell me if it should be on or off. This scenario is 100% of what I use Handbrake for:

A widescreen movie DVD being ripped to watch on my iPod touch.
(Batman Begins, Braveheart, Heat, Goodfellas, Ocean's Eleven, Sneakers, you name it).

Do I want it A-PAR on or off?

I imagine since enabling A-PAR removes my ability to resize the video smaller, it's going to be a larger file (both in filesize and resolution) than I need for viewing on my touch.

Thanks
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

yacoub wrote:So you can imagine the confusion of now reading your guide and comments in this thread that seem to say PAR should be enabled for encoding widescreen DVD movies for iPod/iPhone use.
WTF?
No one has said any such thing.

I have no idea how I could make this any clearer than having at the top of the guide:

"Right off the bat, to save people time, here are situations when you DON'T want to use anamorphic encoding:

1. When you want to watch your movies on an iPod "

Why you're even asking if you should turn PAR on for an iPod Touch encode, I don't know. You should be using the preset. It's not on in the preset. Why would the preset have it off, if you're supposed to use it?
yacoub
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Post by yacoub »

I guess you don't see how some of the advice you give appears contradictory to less technical folks like myself, but no matter - you confirm that it shouldn't be on for iPod touch and that's what I was hoping to hear. Thanks for confirming that.
Maury Markowitz
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Post by Maury Markowitz »

jbrjake wrote: So because you're assuming something, and the guide doesn't confirm your assumptions, the guide is unclear?
*sigh*

Should I use this option on 4:3 video, or not? Yes or no?

Maury
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Post by Cavalicious »

If you don't like the answers you are getting. Then figure the damn thing out yourself.
lordeagle
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Regarding iPod resolution

Post by lordeagle »

Hey folks,

So I have a video iPod ( the 5G I think they're called). Just to make you understand, I screwed up a video the other day and the height turned out to be tiny bit over 480 pixels.

So yeah anamorphic's not causing a problem because it's a small creen, but iTunes would simply NOT copy the file onto the iPod (yeah i know they are other progz out there to put files on the iPod but I personnally manage it all from iTunes). So point is, if you have a video whose width is larger than 640 OR a hieght over 480 is will NOT work for the iPod. So exit Anamorphic. That's all.

Personnal comment: past the limitation (640x480....which is more than enough for a 320x240 screen), i think the videos look gorgeous on the iPod. The only prob is the sound (not loud enough), but that's been said before.
Bodhi395
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Post by Bodhi395 »

From what I can gather, you use the anamorphic(PAR) setting when on the DVD package it says its anamorphic or made for widescreen tv's or something like that. Is that too simplistic of a rule of thumb?

Also this is assuming you want to watch it on a regular tv, not an ipod.
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

Maury Markowitz wrote: *sigh*

Should I use this option on 4:3 video, or not? Yes or no?
I already answered your question. It's not my fault you didn't like the answer:

"Whether or not to use anamorphic with 4:3 is entirely dependent on how you view the movies. VLC will display them at 720*540 so yes it's useful there, but QuickTime will display at 640*480 so it's wasteful there."

And as sdm pointed out in the relevant thread in the development forum, if you scale up for display on an hdtv or something, it's the same result regardless.
sdm
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Post by sdm »

I think the answer is 'yes', use anamorphic par on 4:3 content if you are going to be scaling up the video.

In my case 4:3 material gets scaled to 960(w) x 720(h) to be viewed on a 1280(w) x 720(h) hdtv.
Scaling 720(w) -> 960(w) is better than scaling 640(w) -> 960(w).
Right?

--sdm.
Honeyko
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Post by Honeyko »

Would I be loony in imaging that a future version might create PAR Anamorphic 1.5:1 output to reduced DARs? (e.g., 540x360, 16x9 DAR width=640 or 608x405/DARw=720, instead of the standard 720x480/DARw=853) - ?
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

Honeyko wrote:Would I be loony in imaging that a future version might create PAR Anamorphic 1.5:1 output to reduced DARs? (e.g., 540x360, 16x9 DAR width=640 or 608x405/DARw=720, instead of the standard 720x480/DARw=853) - ?
No, that wouldn't be loony. I have a thread in the Dev forum all about it.
Honeyko
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Post by Honeyko »

Prior to a new version, how would I manually hoodwink anamorphic output into an AVI container?

It's easy enough to resize 720x480 into some other 3:2 ratio, but getting it to display at 16x9 in AVI is the devil. Yet HB is already doing that, so I assume it's possible.
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