Widescreen suggestion

TommyRude · Post by **TommyRude** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 1:13 pm

Which do y'all think is better for widescreen distro, using a 16:9 header, or a 16:9 equivalent pixle ratio wit a 1:1 header?
Mainly I'm concerned about whether or not most video players will interpret the proper aspect ratio like WMP does.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:37 pm

A 16:9 equivalent aspect ratio on an AVI file so that you don't have to worry about aspect ratio flags.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 10:14 pm

Scintilla wrote:A 16:9 equivalent aspect ratio on an AVI file so that you don't have to worry about aspect ratio flags.

Hehe yeh, you only have to worry about AR flags if you're encoding to MPEG-1 or 2, not to AVI. AVI is better, so use that.

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 11:31 pm

SS5_Majin_Bebi wrote: AVI is better, so use that.

Avi has aspect ratio flags but a lot of programs ignore them. As for the best container? I hear Matroska is pretty good. Avi is generally accepted among Windows users and Mpeg 1 is the most compatible.

Which container you choose is up to you but as for the topic, I'd go with Scintilla's suggestion of using a 16:9 DAR equivilent resolution and a 1:1 PAR.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 12:35 am

Corran wrote:
SS5_Majin_Bebi wrote: AVI is better, so use that.
Avi has aspect ratio flags but a lot of programs ignore them. As for the best container? I hear Matroska is pretty good. Avi is generally accepted among Windows users and Mpeg 1 is the most compatible.

Which container you choose is up to you but as for the topic, I'd go with Scintilla's suggestion of using a 16:9 DAR equivilent resolution and a 1:1 PAR.

This is true, of course. But I was trying not to make it too difficult for him, lol, and just leave the choices at a basic level. If you know nothing about a person on a forum, you must always assume they know nothing, hehe...

j/k of course, but yes. just tryin to keep it simple.

TommyRude · Post by **TommyRude** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 2:49 am

Meh, I'm just gonna go wit 420x320 wit' a 16:9 header. Screw the people who don' use WMP

BTW Cor, Matroska an' Ogm are only useful if you're including more than one audio track or subtitles. The REAL reason people wanna use them so much now is cuz they think they're 'fighting the system' by not using a standard MS created.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 3:08 am

TommyRude wrote:Meh, I'm just gonna go wit 420x320 wit' a 16:9 header. Screw the people who don' use WMP :P

BTW Cor, Matroska an' Ogm are only useful if you're including more than one audio track or subtitles. The REAL reason people wanna use them so much now is cuz they think they're 'fighting the system' by not using a standard MS created.

Nothing wrong with that. I'm all for getting away from AVI to something better as fast as possible.

TommyRude · Post by **TommyRude** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 10:35 am

What's wrong wit AVI? Y'act like the format has some kind of inherent flaw.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 12:17 pm

I would suggest going with true aspect ratio and keeping with 1:1. With both Mpeg1/2 and AVI it can be very iffy if the everyone's player will playback the video correctly or if it'll look screwy. You want things to look nice unversially.

I suggest you look at the super wide screen video in my signature, 856x480.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 12:40 pm

TommyRude wrote:What's wrong wit AVI? Y'act like the format has some kind of inherent flaw.

It does. Here are some of the hacks:

- B-frames. A complete hack; check out bond_d9's last post here for a good explanation of just what has to be done to get b-frames working in AVIs.
- > 4G files. OpenDML's way of solving this is by linking together additional RIFF chunks, but there should be no need for this.
- Field (instead of frame) encoding support.
- Streaming.

I suppose it's a little unfair to call the work of the OpenDML group (which figures into points 2-4) "hacks". It's a good description of what it is, though -- trying to extend an outdated format to do things it never should do. More modern containers such as Ogg bitstreams, Quicktime, MPEG-4 containers, Matroska do all this (and more) already.