Good point Joey, I probably ought to have changed from the default, “Loose”. That must give some sort of “wiggle room” that is not needed. It did not cause any negative effect, though. Well, next time.
Haven’t used Handbrake in a while cause I never got why it defaults to Variable Frame Rate and why you can’t preview a still picture on Windows to crop the movie like you can do in Staxrip, Hybrid, etc.
How about you use DVD Shrink reauthor mode and Set Start/End feature to cut a 1min clip of one of your letterboxed DVDs (only 1 audio so it’s small) and upload it to Sendspace or something. So everyone here could encode with their favourite tool and we’ll see what setting looks best on the WDTV?
JoeySmyth wrote:
Steerpike wrote:But then I’m thinking, if we are keeping the ‘display’ width at 720, and the input is already 720, is there any need for ‘anamorphic’ settings at all …?> Nope, i set Anamorphic to “None” because i’m using exact video dimensions.> To confirm my perference not to use “Automatic Settings” see above: Input: 720x480 Display Size output: 641x346> I know in video encoding there is always some loss in quality … but to downscale from the original dimensions is something i would not want.
So, Joey, since you were referring to screen shots of my Picture settings, so I looked into this. I made another mkv using the original dimensions of 720 x 480 Aspect Ratio 1:133, and I noticed that the aspect ratio changed to 720 x 400 when I clicked on box to lock aspect ratio. OK, so then I clicked it off and made the mkv at 720 x 480. The results was the video was stretched vertically. I was baffled as to why, and when I looked at the box the DVD was in it said the Aspect ratio was 1:1.85 which is real close to 720 x 400 ratio.
The takeaway is, if you set Anamorphic to “None” and you want as large a picture as possible from a given letterbox movie, lock the aspect ratio. Handbrake seems to favor the larger Width number and adjusts the Height to meet the movie’s actual ratio. The exact ratio of my completed mkv turned out to have a Height of 384 (not 400) due to autocropping black removal along the top and bottom and much less off the Width. The actual movie frame looks fine, and all that is missing is letterboxing and a small black border around the actual movie frame itself. In fact, I can still see some of the black border, as it is a “different” black than the TV screen’s total blackness.
Thanks to everyone for contributing here! I’ve found, from my laborious testing over the past few days, that my ‘real TV’ - an older Vizio 16:9 LCD TV - behaves slightly differently from my Samsung 27" PC monitor (also 16:9) when connected to my WDTV. The results of tests through WDTV to my Samsung monitor are very similar to the results seen when testing the file in VLC on my PC, but the TV is slightly different (verified it’s set to ‘wide’). Essentially, the same file, played through WDTV to my TV, typically does more cropping compared to what is seen on the Samsung monitor. What i have found is - if I make sure handbrake is set to have Anamorphic ‘None’, and set ‘Width’ to 720, then the image fills the width of my TV without any cropping and no ‘side’ bars. Any other setting of width (less than 720) causes ‘cropping’ horizontally. For the vertical dimensions, I’ve found that the sum of the ‘crops’ (top and bottom) plus the ‘Height’ value, should come close to 480.
My goal is to make a file that I can play on multiple ‘real’ TVs in different locations - this whole project started because I had to travel for work and spend 3 weeks remote, so I ended up creating a library of my movies on a hard drive so I could have my movie collection in both places.
My ideal settings, for a classic 16:9 movie that is letterboxed, are as follows:
Source: 720x480 Aspect Ratio: 1.33 (this is informational)
Width: 720. Height: 400. Keep aspect ratio - yes
Anamorphic: none
Modulus: 16 (I could probably tweak this more)
Cropping Manual
Left, Right = 0
Top, Bottom = 60 (I could probably tweak this more)
A very close variation on this that was near identical was:
Width: 720. Height: 368. Keep aspect ratio - no
Top, Bottom crop = 70
I’ve had near-identical results by turning Anamorphic to Custom, and setting
Width 720 Height 480
Display Width 854
PAR Width 32
PAR Height 27
Top, bottom Crop =38
So now it’s time to re-process about 2 dozen movies that I initially ripped 10 years ago! Glad I still have the original DVDs!
Thanks again everyone - this has been most illuminating! I love this product and this forum.
The plot thickens …
As I mentioned in previous posts, I was getting different results between VLC on my laptop, WDTV outputting to my Samsung 27" monitor, and WDTV outputting to my Vizio LCD TV. I was working hard to get a video file that was perfect in VLC, only to find it cropping on my Samsung monitor and cropping even more on my TV. I finally located a test image and played it on all three setups, and it confirms my earlier concerns …
Basically, the image (shown below) has three sets of white concentric lines near the outer edge of the display (ignore the colored box in the middle). The image below is a screen shot on my laptop when playing the test in VLC, full screen. When I play the same file on WDTV, hooked up to my Samsung monitor, the outer line is completely invisible, but you can see the two inner sets. And on my Vizio TV, only the inner white line is visible.
I’m not totally surprised that my TV is cropping like this, but I am surprised that my Samsung monitor is doing a certain amount of cropping.
So all that effort I put in, above, to finding the ideal ‘handbrake’ settings was somewhat bogus, since I was compensating for the somewhat nasty cropping of my TV. I need to test this on another TV, but that will take a while…
Is it expected that an HDMI-connected computer monitor will crop also?
“Cropping” is caused by “Overscan” of your TV / Monitor
Unless your TV / Monitor has Menu Settings to Disable it … it will Overscan the Picture (And Crop It)
Here’s a recent post about Samsung TV Overscan
As Joey said, the “cropping” effect is caused by overscanning the video picture. Overscanning is a slight enlargement of the picture so that a small percent of the entire picture is beyond the viewable display range, (and therefore it appears to be cropped).
Why is this done? Because in the days of CRT-only TVs and broadcast TV, (and even today) TVs overscan/enlarge the picture for display to move the syncing signals riding on top of the broadcast picture so they are moved off-screen and they don’t show up on the TV screen.
WIth today’s HD TVs and HD videos, we want to see the entire picture if possible and why some newer TVs allow adjustment of the overscan feature, (i.e. it can be turned off). My Panasonic Plasma has this kind of control. It is buried deep in one of the Picture internal controls accessed by the remote. Here is a screenshot from the TV user manual explaining how to use the control for my TV:
You can see from above that the picture displayed can be either 100% size or 95% size. I have my control set to 100% size so there is no overscanning taking place. With this setting, the only time I can see any of the syncing signals(“noise”) is on local TV broadcasts of news, weather, sports, etc. although on most channels this isn’t even visable Since the control affects ALL signals sent to TV, I want my TV to especially not overscan my non-broadcast signals, and therefore have my TV set to 100% picture from all video sources
Search through your TV manual or remote control adjustments to find a similar control (perhaps with a different name) to adjust your TV’s overscan feature.
