Unless they tried to make it 17:9 or something like that.

I'm sorry, not trying to be rude, but I can't understand any reasons behind this, unless I missed some changes in video standards lately.

You see, I tried encoding an HD video to an MPEG2 PAL Widescreen target for DVD authoring in a computer with Adobe Media Encoder..
And what I got was an image that was squeezed horizontally, showing a couple of thin black bars on the left and right sides.
I thought I was doing something wrong, but everything, including the pixel aspec ratio, was set right.
So I started comparing the source and the output, back and forward in the configuration panel. And it didn't seem to squeeze, but rather to be scaled down.

That's when I realized the reason behing all this: the pixel aspect ratio for widescreen PAL video is 1.46 (actually 1.4587 if I recall correctly) instead of 1.42!!!

That's why the HD 16:9 video is scaled down. This new PAL standard is wider (or shorter) than the 16:9 standard. But when you play it anywhere, of course, the video (still in 720x576 resolution) plays with a 1.42 pixel aspect correction, and instead of having a proportionally scaled down video like Adobe Media Encoder thinks it's succesfully doing.

Now, two questions arise.
Why was the pixel aspect ratio changed in CS5 (I checked with Premiere and the same thing happens, even in the project templates)?
And (very important to be able to live with this in the future) can it be overrun?

Hope there's a solution for this.
Best regards to all of you in this great community!

Sorry, you are wrong, as Adobe has been in the past. Luckily Adobe corrected their mistake some versions back, can't remember if it was with CS3 or CS4, but they now adhere to the worldwide accepted BBC standards.

And yes, PAL 16:9 is not really 16:9, just as 4:3 is not really 4:3.

Your problem is easy to solve. Crop off 13 pixels from the top and bottom of your source when exporting to AVI or MPEG2-DVD.

No, I'll have to insist. It's wrong NOW. I don't know why you're saying it's been fixed now...

I'll throw in a clear explanation as to why.

We all agree that PAL is 720x576, right? And that is not 4:3 nor 16:9. Just like NTSC (720x480) isn't either. 4:3 would be 720x540 and 16:9 would be 720x404. Now, that is if we were to preserve horizontal resolution, like has been usully done for the internet.
But in these standards programs tend to preserve the vertical resolution, and the ratios provided for 16:9 do just that.
So let's do a little math: how much is 720*1.46? 1050. So, if we follow the new ratio Adobe brings along, widescreen is 1050x576. Now, let's do a logical operation... Let's turn the native proportion, 16:9 into PAL. Take Photoshop, for instance and change the vertical image size to 576 without changing the proportion (the aspect ratio). How much is the 16x9 pixels image now? It's 1024x576. And guess what! That's exactly what you get when you multiply 720 by 1.42, the RIGHT aspect ratio Adobe has dropped.

I really don't know where you come from, but please (and again I'm sorry if I'm coming off as rude) think about it. Are you saying that now that they have a 16.45:9 PAL widescreen they have made it right?
1.46:1 is not 16:9.

By the way, if I crop anything top and down I'm losing information, and that's not the point. Why should I make any unnecesary compromises?

EDIT: The exact ratio is 1.422222222222... Not just 1.42. But well, that's what I remembered. The statement still stands!

Well, I don't know where you are from either, but wherever that is, you are ill informed.

First read this:BBC - Commissioning - A Guide to Picture Size (http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tvbranding/picturesize.shtml)

If you don't like it, convince the BBC, not Adobe.

Adobe changed PAR for sd PAL and NTSC in CS4. Right at the same time, if I'm not mistaken, that they landed a big juicy contract with the BBC ;)

So they made the change to appease some big broadcasters, but this is a PITA for many of us. I have tons of square pixel compositions made with previous versions of after effects in the old "wrong" PAR.
And it's now a bit of a nuisance to share stuff between Adobe and some other software I use, like Vegas and Combustion.
The least Adobe should have done is to offer the old PAR presets along with the new ones.

What other software on the market uses the correct PAR? I think even AVID doesn't.

Actually, Edius and Vegas have been using the correct BBC standards for years, when Adobe was still using the incorrect PAR's. Don't know about Avid.

You are right of course about Vegas. Don't know why I remembered otherwise. Combustion uses 768 and 1024 for square pixel PAL unfortunately.
I don't use Edius or Avid. I just remember that at the time adobe made the change, there were some complaints from people about mismatch with Avid, Smoke, and some 3D apps. I also know some animation softwares that uses the "wrong" PAR, 1.067/1.422.

In any case, it doesn't really matter. Adobe will not change this back now, and there's really no reason it should. Still a PITA in some cases none the less.

Back in the old days, when I was using Premiere 6.5, a Canopus DVStorm card and Sound Forge for Audio (it was not even Sony back then), I complained about the inconsistent way of handling PAR's between the three of them, DVStorm followed Premiere. Sound Forge and the first editions of Edius followed the BBC standards. I then had the same problems you are having now, black borders. It was very frustrating, but that was a very long time ago...

I think an easier way to think about it is to see that that the shape of the HD and SD widescreen rectangles are a little different. HD really is 16:9, but SD is a little wider. Thus, when you scale down to SD, you have 3 choices:
1. Distort the frame, stretching it a bit (the old method)
2. Lose some image top and bottom and scale down a little less, filling the SD frame.
3. Keep all the image content, scale so the frame is filled vertically, and have a little blank space right and left.

Saying Adobe, the BBC, Avid, Apple and everyone else is wrong doesn't really address the problem. The PAR is correct for preserving the correct shape of images. It's just that the shape of the HD and SD boxes are different. Harm's suggestion is a good way to proceed if you don't want the little pillars.

Hey Bill. Yeah, I know I'm not solving anything by ranting, but it frustrated me that no one brought this up and I was hoping there was a way to correct the default aspect ratio of the Adobe family somehow and somebody would tell me. I did think of the 3 solutions you toss (like the one Harm mentioned) but they all involve re-rendering the footage and it's so pointless to me seeing how it all comes down to a (call me stubborn) wrong PAR.

I already went on to explain how the new Adobe PAR doesn't fit the 16:9 aspect ratio most of us use now. You agree with this on me Harm, right? In squares pixels 16:9 is 1024x576 for PAL. The new PAR (or the BBC PAL standard) makes 1050x576 image. That's 16.45:9. Not 16:9. So, the BBC standard differs from the 16:9 standard.

I've been shooting video since 2005, and since then I've lurked this forum and learned a lot from this community. I've shot with Digital8 cameras, DV cameras, PD170, GS500, the Canon HV series, etc. All of them used the "old" PAR that I knew from Adobe. And I never saw anything distorted, and it all made sense to me. Not in this cameras, not in DVD players, not in PC programs. Nowhere. Why? Because it was logical that the math worked that way, since it was the only way to get real 16:9 proportions. Really, I suck at math. But this is very easy to calculate. BBC, as I see now, doesn't do 16:9.

Now, I'd be glad to read someone explain me why that's so. Why are they wider?

Been reading a bit about the BBC standard. Please, how many of you, and how many other people does use BBC standard monitors and broadcasts that way? How many of you record or view 702x576 images???
It's so pointless. The workflow, from recording to delivering is set for 720x576 and it's corresponding 1.42222222 (yeah...) PAR everywhere but in the BBC. Why change it then? I mean, it'd be great to have the BBC PAR for those people who actually use it. But what about the rest of the world? Leave the other option! It actually ends up messing up your footage, shrinking it horizontally. It goes against any logic. I mean, really, load some PAL footage on Premiere and you will surely get distorted footage (squeezed down) until you finish it and watch it on Media Player Classic or your TV. Because no camera we use shoots like BBC wants. Why the hell would Adobe make such a decision? Sorry, again, I'm quite frustrated that almost no one has brought this up so far.

By the way, Harm, when I said "where you come from" I meant to say that I didn't know where you got your info from. I'm not a native English speaker, I may fail on some elaborations. Sorry.

Here's an article about the corrections of the pixel aspect ratios:
pixel aspect ratios in After Effects CS4 and other applications (http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2009/07/pixel-aspect-ratios-in-after-e.html)

I probably wore you off already, but Harm: cropping 13 pixels off the top and bottom would only make the image end up even thinner.

And thinking about it, the other solutions you give, Bill, won't do any good because they can't be done in the end side of encoding.

The only solution I can find now is squeezing the footage vertically and get slim bars on the top and bottom of the video, so that when it goes to PAL DVD it looks as if it was scaled down a bit.
Any other method won't work, because they all give you a 1920x1080 or a 1280x720 videos. Or even 720x576 accurately corrected to be 16:9. The encoder will read it as 16:9, an since it encodes with the 1.46 PAR it will always leave two black bars on the sides so as to sit the image "undistorted" in the middle of their (distorted) view of how the PAR for PAL widescreen should be.
Unless I squeeze the footage in, say, Premiere, and then export to a non-standard format like 1920x1053 or 1280x702, or any other numbers that match the 16.45:9 PAR of the CS5 package, the result when encoding will always be the same. And it looks distorted (squeezed horizontally or stretched vertically, depends on how you put it) on either a PC monitor or a TV.

Like I said, this whole thing would be solved if there was an alternative PAR to choose from, if you could customize it or if you could at least stretch or squeez on the output end!

Please try out any of the things I've mentioned. You'll see what I mean.

I'm pushing the limit, perhaps. Feel like the only one crazy enough to complain about this. But have DVD movies been wrong all along? This whole aspect ratio thing (because it comes down to that, rather than the mere PAR) is really bothering me.

Isn't there a way to override the default PAR Adobe brings? I mean, it takes an awful long time to encode in AME, but it has good quality.

Here is a small image I was able to do before going to work. Maybe it's me that I know the image so much and that's why it annoys me that much more. But here is an example of what I get with this new/old BBC PAR.

It always used to be possible to define your own "standard" for use in After Effects.... it was done by adding a written definition in a text file that resided in a particular folder..... (I don't have the details to hand at the moment but will look them up..) I am assuming that this is still possible on newer versions of After Effects....?

Ironically, I was using this feature about nine years ago to make the BBC standard settings to use in After Effects when it was only offering the old, wrong, default settings. (Chris and Trish Myers books covered this subject in some detail I seem to recall.)

If anyone really wanted to, they could define their own 'wrong' setting.... but it would probably be better to fully understand and use the 'correct' setting that Adobe use now.

Ernesto,

I will try to post a clear description of this issue, but I am slow at writing this sort of thing so please be patient with me. You should never need to end up with black bars at the side of the image unless you are using any old analogue sourced video that has been transferred to a digital format.... and if you are using old analoge material, you will see that it arrives with black bars at the sides already.

A few posts back, you asked "Are you saying that now that they have a 16.45:9 PAL widescreen they have made it right?" and the answer is basically YES. (I haven't checked your figures, but a 720x576 frame that is filled to the edges with image is NOT 16x9 that has been horizontally squeezed into that frame size.... it is 16-and-a-bit-extra x 9 that has been squeezed into that frame size. A modern digital video camera correctly recording Standard Definition PAL widescreen into a 720x576 digital format is recording a 16-and-a-bit-extra x 9 picture. This is the reason why the old Adobe maths are considered wrong.)

....I realise I am not writing clearly and have to put more effort into my explanation... as I said , please be patient while I try to write something clear and concise.

dave


EDIT

Ernesto, I have just seen your post #14. Can you tell me what the original image is ..... is it the 720x576 output of a modern digital camera?

If you follow the link that I provided above, you can find detailed explanations by many folks, including Chris and Trish Meyer. Chris evens tells how to "make it all go away" and use the old, wrong values.

cropping 13 pixels off the top and bottom would only make the image end up even thinner..
When you crop off the top and bottom and the picture is set to scale to fit it will make itself fit the screen vertical. The black lines will now be outside the frame. Just try it.

Ann, you're right, that cropping thing worked to eliminate distortion (I had thought Harm meant to crop on export, not on AME, I'm sorry Harm! read it wrong). The problem is it's actually taking away info unnecesarily (well, it's necessary to bypass this problem, but it's a shame to be forced to erase part of my video to be able to expor to DVD).

Dave, thanks for your answer. The source image is a 1920x1080 video, and output to a 720x576 with 1.46 PAR. Please try to encode an HD video to widescreen PAL DVD and you'll get that exactly (unless the 26 vertical pixels are cropped...).

And about video cameras capturing 16.45:9 images... Why do you say that? I've never seen distorted images coming from them when editing with the "wrong" PAR. And how would that work on any HDV camera? You record HDV which is 16:9, then capture it in DV format and you have to watch it stretch while editing?
Or, put another way, when you watch that footage on a regular TV, your watching horizontally stretched material then?
I mean, really, you are saying that TV has always been 16:45:9 and hiding tiny portions of the sides by stretching the image to then show a real 16:9 image? (well, underscan takes away a lot more, but that's another story). Why is my "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" DVD have a filled image instead of being sitting in the middle with two black bars on the sides (it's not because of the 1.85:1 aspect ratio working ala 13 pixel cropping, mind you...).

I sound and feel stubborn. But I feel like I'm not being understood at all.

Todd, thanks. But the problem isn't in After Effects. I work in HD (I'll take note of the link if I have to do an SD comp). The problem comes when exporting to SD DVD, so it's Adobe Media Encoder that causes the big hassle right now. I mean, I can use ProCoder (have been using it for a long time now). It's just that AME looks better to me. Much less blurred, it holds a lot more detail from the HD source.
Oh, and I had noticed this problem once I exported an HD project directly to DV. There were the black bars, and it seemed quite odd, but it's only now that I realized why that was.

...................................................

Dave, thanks for your answer. The source image is a 1920x1080 video, and output to a 720x576 with 1.46 PAR. Please try to encode an HD video to widescreen PAL DVD and you'll get that exactly (unless the 26 vertical pixels are cropped...).

And about video cameras capturing 16.45:9 images... Why do you say that? I've never seen distorted images coming from them when editing with the "wrong" PAR. And how would that work on any HDV camera? You record HDV which is 16:9, then capture it in DV format and you have to watch it stretch while editing?
Or, put another way, when you watch that footage on a regular TV, your watching horizontally stretched material then?
I mean, really, you are saying that TV has always been 16:45:9 and hiding tiny portions of the sides by stretching the image to then show a real 16:9 image? (well, underscan takes away a lot more, but that's another story). Why is my "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" DVD have a filled image instead of being sitting in the middle with two black bars on the sides (it's not because of the 1.85:1 aspect ratio working ala 13 pixel cropping, mind you...).

I sound and feel stubborn. But I feel like I'm not being understood at all.

Ernesto, I don't think you are being stubborn and I DO understand, honestly. I am trying to find a way to clearly explain but obviously failing so far...... which is MY problem, not yours !

This situation only applies to standard definition, and I am sure you will understand it completely if you can bring yourself to accept the following statements.......

The image that is intended to be seen by the viewer as a 16 x 9 image is contained in the central 702 x 576 section of a 720 x 576 digital file.

The 9 pixel wide strips at each side were never intended to be seen by the viewer.

........ now, since all this was developed, we have got loads of devices (like computers) that let us look at the whole of that 720 x 576 file, and we now see those two strips which we were never intended to see. If you watch that digital video on domestic television equipment you should not even see the 9 pixel wide strips at the left and right.


To complicate matters, when cameras started to record to SD digital formats in widescreen, they tended to fill the whole 720 x 576 with picture, but still only the central 702 x 576 section was the 16 x 9 image destined for the viewer..... the 9 pixels at each side were never intended to be seen.

Now lets come to your test frames. You have just said that these are downsized HD.

Well, HD is true 16 x 9 and goes from top to bottom and side to side of a 1920 x 1080 digital file.

....so you can see that, if what I say is true, it will correctly downsize to the central 702 x576 area of an SD digital file.... and leave the two black bars that are never intended to be seen. That is what you got.

The points I've made (sorry if I've sounded a bit heavy handed in my explanation) are mentioned in the links that Todd sent you, and I would recommend reading some of those as well.

If you get a spare moment, you could try a small test. Make a short DVD test of your resized HD, complete with black bars at the sides, and look at it on a conventional TV, played from a conventional DVD player, and see if you see the black edges... in theory you should not.

I am going to go and do that same test myself now and will let you know what I see.....

Hope this might help explain a bit.

dave

( ..we'll discuss "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" another time....d. )

Thanks for your thorough response, Dave.

I think I understand the basics of it all, but what bothers me is this: have we worked on distorted images all this time? Because what I get from what you say and what I've understood of the readings, is that SD never shot real 16:9, it was always that little more. And if that''s so, I've always edited with an aspect ratio that shrunk my images horizontally but I never noticed it. And the PAR applied by programs like BSPlayer and Media Player Classic was wrong too. And the only real image I was getting was from playing my DVDs or DV cams on the TV, which stretched the image that little more to make it look right. It's only now that it has been fixed and we're back on track with a 16.45:9 image on DV like it was always meant to be seen. Is that right?

It was never the black bars that bothered me. I know I won't see them on a TV screen because of the underscan, and I don't care about seeing them on a monitor, so long as the image isn't distorted, and that's what I've been getting from playing the DVD files on my computer. Perhaps I can't tell the difference when watching the image on a TV? (coincidentally I had to record a DVD yesterday to show some short films on a film festival of sorts, and got to "test" it)

Again, it's the distortion that I see that bothers me! Because if every playing device I know played the footage on a 16.45:9 aspect ratio (1.46 PAR) the image would be faithful to the original, but what I see is the old 1.42 PAR, the 16:9 aspect ratio for DV and DVD, and so the image, now sitting in the middle, in that 702x576 area, looks squeezed.
By the way, considering that, I'll have to refrain from the 13 pixel cropping. It doesn't fix the problem, it only fills the black sides. To fix the problem, like I once said (and then got lost) is to squeeze the image vertically leaving two black stripes on the top and bottom, thus ending with an apparently scaled down 16:9 image (all this if all the media players play the material in a 1.42 PAR, like I -perhaps- wrongly think).

So, do DVD players as well as cameras display/record a 16.45:9 image with the 16:9 one sittting in the middle?

Please, after we clear this whole thing (if we ever do) let's talk about Scott Pilgrim! :P

Thanks for your thorough response, Dave.

I think I understand the basics of it all, but what bothers me is this: have we worked on distorted images all this time?

If your source image was from an SD camera and you didn't stretch it, compress it, rotate it etc. ....and then you output it to a DVD or back on to tape, then no, you probably haven't been working with a distorted image.

The thing to think about here is how the footage is interpreted and what are the settings of the composition. If the imported SD widescreen is interpreted under the old Adobe rules and used in a composition that is also set to the old Adobe rules then the image will not have been dimensionally distorted at all. It will travel through the system intact, it's the final display system that will not show the edges of the shot , but that is OK because the camera was taking the shot "knowing" that those edge bits were off the side of the display. All is correct.

Let us imagine that the shot has a large, perfectly circular clock face in the middle of shot. That would be displayed correctly as circular. ...so what's the problem?

If you now rotate the shot by 90 degrees the circular clock face would no longer be a perfect circle because the AEs maths are wrong.... and that's because it's working with an inaccurate pixel aspect ratio.

A different example... same shot of the clockface (not rotated or anything) ..looks fine. You now import a square pixel graphic of a white circle on black. It is interpreted as square pixels. You add it as a layer at 50% transparency over the clock shot and try to match it to the clock face. You'll find it won't quite fit because it is oval..... the maths are wrong because of the inaccurate pixel aspect ratio in the composition settings.

If you repeat these two exercises with the new Adobe settings (both interpreting the footage and for the composition settings) all of it would work correctly.

Because what I get from what you say and what I've understood of the readings, is that SD never shot real 16:9, it was always that little more.

Think of it more that the SD camera shot it 16 x 9 plus a little bit more picture at the sides... and that bit more picture is going to get cropped off when it is displayed on a 16 x 9 television, leaving you with a genuine unsquashed and unstretched 16 x 9 picture. This is what happens for video going straight from the camera to the screen.... part of the "system" and nothing to do with After Effects.....except that you need to know it's there! ...and the pixel aspect ratio numbers need to know it's there as well !

And if that''s so, I've always edited with an aspect ratio that shrunk my images horizontally but I never noticed it.

If you've followed what I said above, you will understand that is not necessarily the case. If the input is genuine SD footage and the interpretation is THE SAME as the composition settings, then the footage may well have survived the trip intact even if the PAR numbers were wrong.... any errors might have show up in different ways, as I explained above.

I will reply to the rest of your points later as I have to go now..... but I will say I have no detailed experience of BSPlayer or Media Player Classic so can't really comment on them.....

..anyway, Part 2 to follow....

dave

I guess this all went wrong when they decided there should be black bars along the side... the logic left back then... leaving us with an avalange of seemingly random numbers :-p

But in the end you can always place your true 16:9-(HD)footage in a wider BBC-PAR-sized composition.
Or export your SD project for web as a true 16:9 by cutting the edges in a new composition or during export.

hahaha Yeah, it almost seems as if all that extra math was put in there to prevent outside people to take over production on the BBC. :P

I have no problem with placing the 16:9 image in the BBC PAR video! I'm ok with black bars, always have been since letterbox. Where I do have a problem, however, is in the fact that what I see when playing the footage (at least digitally, maybe far from a computer monitor, on a TV I never noticed) is distorted. Because like I mentioned, BSPlayer, Media Player Classic, I believe that Windows Media Player and the program I used to use to encode (ProCoder) all use the 1.42 PAR. I guess they all followed the Adobe standard and now are all screwed up and they'll have to catch up?

DVD's in my case are only for delivery, to be played on DVD domestic DVD players that will be watched through a regular TV and a projector, but lately quite more often also on LCD TVs... If anyone can actually confirm that all these devices actually play the footage with the (now) correct BBC 1.46 PAR, then everything's OK, because digital delivery is controlled h264 anyways, so no PAR issues to be found there when coming from HD.
But I'm rethinking now about all my SD short films that I encoded on a 720x404 resolution... ¬¬

Dave, thanks again for taking the time to answer with such care! Yeah, I read the Chris Meyer article and saw that wheel example. The distortion worry I mentioned had to do more with working with and staring at a distorted image while editing for years, and designing a bunch of graphics that will now look distorted under the BBC PAR (perhaps my footage wheel is perfectly rounded now, but whatever digital wheel I may have made is now oval... ¬¬)

If your dvd plays ok on the pc and distored on tv check the settings of the dvd player and the tv.

All the computers I remember watching DVDs on play it with a 1.42 PAR, which to me always seemed to look right, thinking that the images were 16:9 images. What looks distorted to me is the HD footage encoded to DVD on AME, like what I showed in the image, because it's encoded with the 1.46 PAR but then played everywhere with a 1.42 PAR.

My DVDs played on a regular DVD player and a regular TV look alright. Because they seem to play on a perfect 16:9 aspect ratio, but maybe there's always been that .45 extra stretch that justifies those black bars on the sides for real 16:9 footage. That's exactly what we're talking about. I'm just now discovering that DV 16:9 was never 16:9!

So, it all boils down to confirming whether or not DVD players, projectors and media player programs know this as well. Because at least in PC (as far as I've seen) they all play the footage in 16:9, 1.42 PAR. It's easily to notice on a 16:9 monitor: the image fills the screen, instead of leaving two little bars on the top and bottom (kinda like 1.85:1 film would).

Hi Ernesto, ...a briefer post from me this time as it's clear you have a pretty full understanding of the situation now......

You have asked an important question though..... how much of the hardware and software uses the "correct" values for pixel aspect ratio.... I think it's true to say you will encounter systems that use both the old and new values. I know this isn't very satisfactory but I don't get too stressed about it myself for four reasons....

1. The people who see and compare the differences on several systems tend to be in the business and aware of the issues. Many end users will see results on just one system and accept it as accurate. If the "industry" tries to get it so that it look right on the domestic viewing systems, then that is probably a good situation to aim for. This is not a defence of the unsatisfactory state of things, just an observation.

2. The magnitude of the possible error is in the region of a 2.5% stretch or squeeze. A tube television from 20 years ago probably had width and height controls somewhere that could easily be set to a worse error than 2.5%. If there are 4 people sitting side by side watching a TV, the two on the ends will be looking at the screen from an angle that could easily distort the perceived "width" of the picture by that kind of amount... and I try not to think about the view from the end seat in the front row of a cinema! Any error is "wrong", but just how "wrong" is it....

3. Awareness of this issue will prompt people (...us..! ) to try to find a way of delivering the most correct version to the end user... ( I am hoping that's what we are doing dicussing this here...now....)

4. It applies to SD only.... and, in time, this issue is just going to disappear as HD, BD and a range of more sopisticated computer and internet delivery systems take over the universe.... Anyone for holographic 3D video ... I've just been watching a prototype on TV... ?

regards

dave

All the computers I remember watching DVDs on play it with a 1.42 PAR, which to me always seemed to look right, thinking that the images were 16:9 images. What looks distorted to me is the HD footage encoded to DVD on AME, like what I showed in the image, because it's encoded with the 1.46 PAR but then played everywhere with a 1.42 PAR.

My DVDs played on a regular DVD player and a regular TV look alright. Because they seem to play on a perfect 16:9 aspect ratio, but maybe there's always been that .45 extra stretch that justifies those black bars on the sides for real 16:9 footage. That's exactly what we're talking about. I'm just now discovering that DV 16:9 was never 16:9!

So, it all boils down to confirming whether or not DVD players, projectors and media player programs know this as well. Because at least in PC (as far as I've seen) they all play the footage in 16:9, 1.42 PAR. It's easily to notice on a 16:9 monitor: the image fills the screen, instead of leaving two little bars on the top and bottom (kinda like 1.85:1 film would).

I am trying to understand the issue here. I exported a full TIFF sequence from Premiere to Encore and authored a PAL DVD (16:9). But it plays back fine on every kind of player. I don't see bars on the sides ever, nor the top and bottom. I used CS3.

Is the difference between 1.46 and 1.42 negligible?

I am trying to understand the issue here. I exported a full TIFF sequence from Premiere to Encore and authored a PAL DVD (16:9). But it plays back fine on every kind of player. I don't see bars on the sides ever, nor the top and bottom. I used CS3.

Is the difference between 1.46 and 1.42 negligible?

You don't see any difference because the PAR was changed in CS4, it's still the same in CS3. The difference small but can be noticed.

Dave, I agree with you on the fact that it's perhaps not a big deal, specially with the death of SD. Well, it isn't that much of a big deal, really... But I'm usually very careful with everything regarding getting the image right and not being able to have control over that frustrates me. Not finding any logic on the whole issue made it even worse.
But I guess I can live with a little distortion if the DVDs are ever played on PCs (at least until players and editing programs catch up).

On TVs, first off I'll hope they all follow the BBC specification (if anybody knows anything about that specific subject, please comment). And if they don't, I know 98% of the people watching my stuff won't ever realize there's any 2.5% distortion going on on the image. After all, I never noticed it if it was there while I authored full framed 16:9 DVDs... Or any non BBC standard PAR DVD, let's say... ¬¬

So, no more worries about the black bars on the side and the possible distortion on some playing devices and/or programs, I guess. :P

I agree with Ernesto and think that this change is seriously stupid. DVD's have been 1.42 for ages, the've all shown perfectly and we've been making dvd's for a long time without any problems.

But now we are forced to add black bars to the side of video because BBC uses 702x576?

Also ALL of our other applications (3d etc) tend to work in 1024x576. Try to squeeze that in.

Awesome.

Slightly off-topic thought:

Maybe it's just the nature of the Anglo-Saxon part of the world to use strange metrics (ounce, stone, inch, gallon, Fahrenheid, feet, yard), where one needs to add extra factors to be able to calculate anything? :-p

I have just skimmed through this thread as I too was concerned about these black strips appearing. I have tried to export my EX1 footage down to SD Pal but I see these bars on my HD TV not just my monitor! I know my camera records native 16:9 with square pixels and it fills my TV screen when shown in HD so surely it should look identical but with lower resolution when shown in SD with no black strips on the sides. Can someone confirm that this shouldn't have happened!

If you did not crop on output you will have these small vertical bars.
Cropping for PAL is 14 pixels top and 12 on the bottom instead of 13 top and bottom. This is preventing unwanted field change.

If you did not crop on output you will have these small vertical bars.
Cropping for PAL is 14 pixels top and 12 on the bottom instead of 13 top and bottom. This is preventing unwanted field change.

I understand how to make the picture fill the screen by cropping it but as discussed in this thread that does not produce the correct aspect ratio.

If I have understood this thread correctly it was mentioned that when you play the footage back on a TV through a DVD player then the black lines should disappear but on my LCD TV they don't! Also if my HD picture fills the screen fully either 1080x1920 or 720x1280 then surely the complete downsized picture in SD should still fill my screen maintaining the correct aspect ratio. It appears not to in my case why???

Hi Steve, ....sorry, been busy and have neglected this thread.....

Sorry to hear you're still seeing the black bars... could you tell me how the DVD is connected to the TV ....HDMI, SCART, component, video...? If you are using HDMI or component, are you using a DVD player which "upscales"?

Also is the TV a purpose built television or a dual purpose computer monitor/television ?

...and finally, is there a setting on your television that removes overscan?

As I previously mentioned to Ernesto (on Feb. 13th), for all this stuff to be correct depends on hardware manufacturers (TVs, DVD players etc.) understanding the correct settings as well, especially with the current tendency to use digital interconnections instead of the analogue ones that were the norm when these standards were set.

I'm not guaranteeing that I will be able to work out what the problem is.... but there may be something obvious we can identify.......

dave

Hi Dave,

I think it is to do with the way my bluray player upscales.

I have a Sony Bravia LCD TV (KDL-37W5500) and I'm playing DVDs through my Sony Bluray player BDP-S760 connected with a HDMI lead.

I don't see the black boarder when played on the Samsung LCD player played on a Panasonic dvd player with HDMI connections.

My bluray player won many awards in 2010 so I will be disappointed if it is upscaling to the wrong aspect ratio. The menu settings appear to be correct and commericial DVDs fill the screen as expected.

Anymore information or advice gratefully appreciated!

Interesting Steve,

Most SD camcorders recording to a digital format would record picture right to the edges of the 720x576, but the content intended to be seen would be in the central 702 pixels. A DVD of this material would not show black lines at the side however you display it.

Commercial DVD's would probably do something similar. If you think about cinema release film that has been transferred to video, there is probably a bit of 'extra' picture available at the side that would normally end up being projected onto the black mask at the edge of the cinema screen, and this might also be included on the edge of a DVD transfer that fills the whole 720 width of the frame. Film to DVD transfers may be a little less precise anyway as the original aspect ratios vary and there is scope for framing adjustments to be made at the transfer stage....

.....what I'm trying to say is that lots of DVDs have will picture across all 720 pixels. The problem really only crops up when you precisely put a 16x9 picture into the central 702 pixels. You might get it right, but it does sound as if you've found a piece of hardware that gets it wrong.

I will look at some info. relating to the gear you are using and see if I can come up with a simple test.

dave

Thanks Dave,

I understand that commercial transfers have probably cropped and scaled footage down to a 16:9 frame so there won't be black bars there. Thank you for looking into this for me.