RandomEngy
Aspect Ratios and Letterboxing
I'm running into a bizarre problem with some playback, and can't figure out whether it's a (well-hidden!) setting in VidCoder or something else.
Take a source that is in "super-wide-screen" format and encode reducing the pixel count. For example, a 16:9 "normal" wide-screen video maintains its aspect ratio at 720 pixels wide by 405 pixels high. Super-wide-screen forced to that 720 pixels wide, though, will end up around 300 pixels high.
Playback on a PC is perfectly normal; VLC and Windows Media Player both "add in" bottom-and-top letterboxing so the aspect ratio is maintained, during playback.
Playback on a TV can, however be completely unpredictable. Even using different super-wide-screen episodes of a TV series from consecutive weeks can end up with one episode "letterboxed" during playback on that TV and another episode vertically stretched. All with the same playback settings, and all with the same encoding settings. (Hours of experimentation with the TV, and an inquiry to the manufacturer, has resulted in no success and responses meaning "huh? we don't have that problem with DVDs and BluRays, or with broadcast, so you're obviousy doing something wrong but we don't care".)
So: Is there something I can do in Vidcoder to force letterboxing, maintaining the rigid width (necessary for certain other devices, it's a disability-access thing)? Is there another setting that I haven't been able to find that does this? Or am I stuck seeing 5-foot-tall child actors turn into NBA point guards at random if playing on the TV?
Do you have anamorphic output? (Non-square pixels)
I could see some TVs having trouble with that.
If things look fine playing back on your PC and you have square pixels in the output you could see if it's having trouble with the resolution. You could set the output aspect ratio to what the TV expects and have VidCoder add padding to get that output resolution.
Anamorphic output is NOT checked on the sizing page. I will try one comparison-conversion each way and see if it makes a difference.
If anamorphic is disabled the next thing I would try is enabling padding and have the output files match your TV's aspect ratio.