Burning RWDVDs to Laptop, question about aspect ratio change

magpye

Hi,

I recently moved apartment to a place where UPC is unavailable so before I handed my box back I burned programmes/films I wanted to keep to DVDRW. Now I'd like to transfer them to my external hardrive via my laptop and tried this earlier using a programme called FormatFactory. I only did one but the aspect ratio seemd to be off (it is a Discovery docu broadcast in 16:9 but it transferred into 4:3). I also have a 16:9 laptop.
My question is would anyone know why this has happened or maybe I should try doing it with another piece of software. Any suggestions?
I was also debating editing the ads out. Is this handy to do? Again any tips on software?
Thanks in advance for any help.advice etc.

yoyo

magpye wrote: »

Hi,

I recently moved apartment to a place where UPC is unavailable so before I handed my box back I burned programmes/films I wanted to keep to DVDRW. Now I'd like to transfer them to my external hardrive via my laptop and tried this earlier using a programme called FormatFactory. I only did one but the aspect ratio seemd to be off (it is a Discovery docu broadcast in 16:9 but it transferred into 4:3). I also have a 16:9 laptop.
My question is would anyone know why this has happened or maybe I should try doing it with another piece of software. Any suggestions?
I was also debating editing the ads out. Is this handy to do? Again any tips on software?
Thanks in advance for any help.advice etc.

Virtualdub should do it, just rip the dvd, load the ifo file into virtualdub, cut out the ads at this point and re-encode the file into avi with the Xvid codec.

Nick

When you say burned to DVD, do you mean you backed up the contents of your PVR box to DVDs?

Whats on the DVDs exactly? media files? what format/extension?

The aspect issue is likely just a playback problem. If you were recording SD broadcasts then they are 720x576 which isn't widescreen. So when they seem to be widescreen on your TV, what is happening is that they are being stretched horizontally out to 16:9. Probably your recordings just don't include this DAR flag.

magpye

yoyo wrote: »

Virtualdub should do it, just rip the dvd, load the ifo file into virtualdub, cut out the ads at this point and re-encode the file into avi with the Xvid codec.

Nick

Thanks Nick, I'll try this tomorrow

magpye

Deleted User wrote: »

When you say burned to DVD, do you mean you backed up the contents of your PVR box to DVDs?

Whats on the DVDs exactly? media files? what format/extension?

The aspect issue is likely just a playback problem. If you were recording SD broadcasts then they are 720x576 which isn't widescreen. So when they seem to be widescreen on your TV, what is happening is that they are being stretched horizontally out to 16:9. Probably your recordings just don't include this DAR flag.

yeah I just played off the upc box and recorded it onto a dvd recorder I have. I don't know too much about broadcasting or the like but I'll google DAR flag. Thanks

magpye

magpye wrote: »

yeah I just played off the upc box and recorded it onto a dvd recorder I have. I don't know too much about broadcasting or the like but I'll google DAR flag. Thanks

I see what you've done now. So what you've got are standard DVD-Videos. Ideally you don't want to convert them to something else again, too many generations of video transcoding really kills the quality.

What do you need to play them on? DVD Player? PC? Media player?

If you just want to play them on a PC/media player its possible to fix the aspect very easily without any more converting.

magpye

Deleted User wrote: »

I see what you've done now. So what you've got are standard DVD-Videos. Ideally you don't want to convert them to something else again, too many generations of video transcoding really kills the quality.

What do you need to play them on? DVD Player? PC? Media player?

If you just want to play them on a PC/media player its possible to fix the aspect very easily without any more converting.

Sorry I went to another world for a few days.
I'll probably be playing them on both media player and laptop.

magpye

magpye wrote: »

Sorry I went to another world for a few days.
I'll probably be playing them on both media player and laptop.

So in that case, first of all rip them off the disc using MakeMKV (free while in trial).

Will only take a few minutes. You'll end up with a MKV file that is playable on a PC or any half-decent media player.

Report back when you've done it and i'll explain how to set a DAR flag.

magpye

Deleted User wrote: »

So in that case, first of all rip them off the disc using MakeMKV (free while in trial).

Will only take a few minutes. You'll end up with a MKV file that is playable on a PC or any half-decent media player.

Report back when you've done it and i'll explain how to set a DAR flag.

hey I've now got the progs transfered to mkv format and they're in 4:3. Thanks for all your help again.

Okay so the next step is to download and install MKVToolnix.

http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/mkvtoolnix-unicode-5.8.0-setup.exe

(windows version, I presume that's what you are using?)

Once you have that installed you want to use the tool called MKVMerge GUI to change the display aspect ratio (DAR) header.

Run MKVMerge, go File > Header Editor > File > Open and choose your video.

Now go to Video Track 1, and change the video display width and video display height values. Then go File > Save

For 16:9 just change the display width to 16 and the height to 9.