What to do when you have anamorphic widescreen footage

[AaronAMV]

So my Tekkonkinkreet DVD is anamorphic widescreen, and my friend helped me out, but I just want to know how you guys do it. I believe it's some kind of weird frame size, but I'm not sure.

[SenTrix]

here read this

[mirkosp]

here read this

>_>"

What Aaron is saying is that Tekkonkinkreet is 2.35:1 and not 4:3 or 16:9 as more common with anime. The proper AR would be 1128x480, which is mod8 but not mod16. If you're fine with mod8 go for it, otherwise you can do either 1120x480 or 1136x480. If it's 2.35 letterboxed into a 16:9, which actually is what you should have since DVDs only support 4:3 and 16:9 flags, then you could use the 1024x432 resolution, which is the closest mod16 to the actual 2.35 res in the case. Another option you have in this case is cropping the letterboxes, editing at 720x432 and then setting the 2.35:1 flag when compressing in mp4 (if you use the zarx264gui, just choose it from the Auto Calculate combo box in the advanced tab)...
or you could just edit 16:9 and leave the letterbox be.
There you have it.

[Qyot27]

Generally speaking, a 4-pixel distortion isn't very noticeable, so I'd just go ahead and recommend 1152x480, even though 1156x480 is exactly 2.39:1. Alternately, I'd suggest resizing to 848x480, cropping the borders off, and then resizing to the nearest mod16 value, optionally taking post-editing letterboxing (as for DVD, retaining the anamorphism*) into account - that would net you 848x368, or 848x352 if the letterboxing is considered.


*What I mean here is if you were going to encode the video for DVD and still wanted to use anamorphic flagging, you'd need to squeeze the video to 720x352 and add 64-pixel borders to the top and bottom. Then set the 16:9 flag in your MPEG-2 encoder. Then the resulting video is 2.39:1, just like the source (or well, 2.41:1, which is close enough; 2.35:1 is the pre-1970 standard but the name sort of stuck, and I assume the movie isn't using that older standard - 2.39:1 is the actual current standard, and would be correct if you used 848x368, but then mod16 isn't evenly divided and one border would need to be larger than the other).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_rat ... ect_ratios

[Qyot27]

Gah, I got some of my values messed up. Here we go again:

848x352 = roughly 2.40:1 and would be correct (1920x800 is 2.40:1 exactly, and proportionally resizing down to 848 width results in 848x352 when you apply mod16, otherwise it's 848x353).

848x360 = roughly 2.36:1 (2.35, 5-repeating, 6:1) and would only be correct if the movie used the older (pre-1970) standard.

848x368 = the above, rounded up to mod16 instead of down. Makes the AR roughly 2.30:1.

[mirkosp]

[...]Then the resulting video is 2.39:1, just like the source (or well, 2.41:1, which is close enough; 2.35:1 is the pre-1970 standard but the name sort of stuck, and I assume the movie isn't using that older standard - 2.39:1 is the actual current standard, and would be correct if you used 848x368, but then mod16 isn't evenly divided and one border would need to be larger than the other).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_rat ... ect_ratios

I suppose that explains why I fecked up the values, it's not actual 2.35:1

[AaronAMV]

@_@

So... Use 1152x480, and do or don't crop of the letterboxing? Then resize it to 848x352 when encoding an mp4?

[Qyot27]

In either case, crop the borders off. The resizing after that is up to you.

You have to ask yourself whether you want 480p or not. 1152x480 is only if you prefer working with the footage at 'true'* 480p (which would require the borders be cropped off before resizing to 1152x480). 848x352 is if you would rather keep the video at 848 width, seeing as how that width is pretty standard, and people might bitch at you over 'upscaling' to 1152x480. Either one is perfectly fine to edit at, or to distribute at - although I will note that using 848x352 on the distro copy will save bits during encoding.

*At least as 'true' as 2.39:1 ratio is in relation to 480p. Most people use the term 480p to refer to 848x480, much the same way that 720p is 1280x720 and 1080p is 1920x1080 (or 1920x1088). Those are the 16:9 ratio baselines for those sizes. Some of the trailers from the Apple site are 1920x800, which is 2.40:1 exactly, but the common parlance still calls them 1080p, even though actual 2.40:1 ratio 1080p would be 2592x1080 (or 2608x1088). 1152x480 at least has the benefit of actually being 480 pixels in height.

[Qyot27]

Sheesh, I gotta double-post again.

If you use VirtualDubMod a lot for this kind of stuff, I'd suggest grabbing the VDMod_Resize plugin from the Sourceforge page. It allows you to do these kinds of calculations quickly by inputting either the height or width, and adjusting the other value to account for the aspect ratio it's set on, even optionally rounding the values to multiples of 16 (mod16). The surest way to do that is to not even load your video into VDub, insert the standard resize filter (give it the original video size), and then use the VDMod_Resize plugin to do the calculation. Of course, if you do load your video you can skip right to VDMod_Resize.

New versions of VirtualDub proper (1.8.8 has it, for instance) have a more comprehensive standard resizer that can do largely the same things. The options are just in different places and some of the behavior is a tad different (in some respects it's easier than the VDMod_Resizer, I'm just very much in the habit of still using VDubMod 1.5.10.3 over the new versions from the original branch).

[AaronAMV]

Well, I have to use 64-bit VDub (not Mod), so I don't even have any resizing tools. I have to resize to how I want it by going to Video>Filter>Resize... It gets really old, but whatever.

All right, thanks for the help. I'll crop of the borders, and end up going with 848x352. If I ever get blu-ray Tekkonkinkreet, what would the frame size be? I feel like you answered it, but I'm not sure. O.o