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[robl45]

Hello,

I'm testing this out and pretty much love it, but one thing I don't understand is the aspect ratio setting.  I go in there and change the aspect ratio and it does nothing.  There is an option to crop black bars on 2.35-1.  I have tested it on multple movies and it does nothing.  I tested it last night on a normal 2.35 to 1 movie and also on a 3d  2.35 to 1 movie.  None of the options do anything.  I would expect and maybe I'm nuts here that the options to crop black bars on a 2.35 to 1 movie would stretch the movie to the height of a 16:9 screen more or less.  At any rate, this is what I want to do with my widescreen movies.  Is there a way to do this?

Also I noticed that the zoom in standard setting 100% fit to window is actually chopping out part of a widescreen movie.  I was testing the movie 2012 and reduced zoom down to around 79% till it actually wasn't cutting anything off the sides.

[robl45]

So looking at this thread below, it appears I could do what its saying to toggle between 16:9 and stretching letterbox films although I don't really understand how to implement this with a mce remote.  And then what would really work best although I don't know if its possible is if I could flag the widescreen movies in someway so that media center knows to always stretch those.  thanks in advance

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89083.0

[RoderickGI]

What do you mean by "I go in there". You can change Aspect Ratio settings using the OSD, accessed by arrow up/down while a video is playing, or by right clicking on a playing or paused video, or by going into Tools>Options>Video. If you use the later method, you would have to stop playback of the video, and restart it for the change to come into effect.

However, since that thread you linked to was written there is some new functionality in madVR. Open the madVR settings via "Tools>Options>Video>Open madVR settings (Advanced)", go to "processing>zoom control" and check "Automatically detect hard coded black bars", then set all the related settings below that as you desire.

Of course if there are no black bars and the movie just has an aspect ration of 2.35:1, then the zoom OSD function should work. If you make a change to the zoom factor for a video, that factor is saved in the [Playback Info] tag in MC, and is used when the video is played again in the future.

[robl45]

Well none of the options with the up down arrows work for aspect ratio. I tried the ones with right click and madvr black bars option. No matter what I have black bars.

[RoderickGI]

Actually all of the Aspect Ratio functions in the OSD do something. They obviously don't do what you want. For example, if you are playing a 2.35:1 movie, and crop it to 2.35:1, you won't actually see any change because the movie is already in 2.35:1 format. There is some information in the Wiki but it looks a bit out of date. It will give you a bit of an idea though.

What I observed when playing a movie that has an Aspect Ratio of 2.35:1 (with no actual black bars encoded in the movie, but with black no-video areas above and below the video), using the OSD Aspect ratio settings was;

Stretch: The width is preserved and the height is stretched to fill the display. (When playing a 4:3 video that fills the height of the screen, this settings stretches in horizontally instead of vertically.)
Crop: Does exactly what you want. Maintains the aspect ratio of the image, stretches it vertically to fill the screen, crops the left and right side of the video to allow this change.
Crop Black Bars 1.85: Does the same as Crop. I would have expected this to do something different, but it wouldn't be useful, so maybe doing nothing is the correct thing.
Crop Black Bars 2.35:1: Displays the movie in the original aspect ration of 2.35:1, filling the screen horizontally, with "black bars" (non-video areas) top and bottom.
Crop Black Bars 2.40:1:Squashes the video vertically slightly, increasing the size of the black bars a little. This seems like the correct thing to do.
Crop Edges: Crops a bit of video from the left and right, and stretches it vertically to maintain the original aspect ratio.

So, if your movie truly has an Aspect ratio of 2.35:1, then the Crop setting should do what you want. It works for me.

If your movie actually has an Aspect Ratio of 16:9, and has black bars included in the video above and below the image, the madVR settings to detect and remove Black Bars should work. You will need to understand what all those settings do though, and check the correct ones.

It sounds like your movies are in fact in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and not 16:9 with black bars top and bottom. If the Crop setting isn't doing what you want, then you should use the zoom function as you tried already, and zoom the movie until it fills the vertical height of the screen. That amount of zoom will be saved in the  [Playback Info] tag so that for future showings the movie will fill the screen on playback, with the left and right sections pushed off the screen (cropped). I believe that is what you want.

[robl45]

if I use zoom, I lose the sides of the picture which obviously I don't want to do, I just want to stretch the movie vertically to fill the screen.  As I mentioned, I tried every option possible and none of them did anything.  Madvr black bars option is set and doesn't seem to be doing anything either although possible I have the wrong option set there.

[blgentry]

if I use zoom, I lose the sides of the picture which obviously I don't want to do, I just want to stretch the movie vertically to fill the screen.

But the picture will be completely distorted if you do that.  Circles will become ovals.  Everything will appear tall and skinny.  You don't really want that do you?

Brian.

[robl45]

Yes, I been doing that for years, sometimes you notice it, but most of the time its hardly noticeable, I'll take that tradeoff over using half my screen.

[RoderickGI]

if I use zoom, I lose the sides of the picture which obviously I don't want to do, I just want to stretch the movie vertically to fill the screen.

Ah, there lies my confusion. Most people do not want to do that, and are happy to lose the sides of the movie to fill the screen vertically. Or they watch the movie in its original aspect ratio.

I don't have a copy of the movie "2012" that you used as an example, but on the two 2.35:1 movies I tested with, Stretch did what you want. It stretched the movie vertically to fill the screen, with no cropping. Maybe it worked because I was using my MC Client workstation with 2560x1600 screen. Maybe I'll test later on my 1920x1080 HTPC.

The stretch was very noticeable.

Personally I wouldn't do that, because I don't like the stretched effect. On of the advantages of watching a 2.35:1 movie in its original aspect ratio, unstretched, is that subtitles appear below the picture, when I am using them.

By the way, if none of the options are actually making any visible change at all, which is what you keep saying, then your TV is probably correcting the image back to its correct aspect ratio. That would be the only explanation I could think of for seeing no change, unless black bars are actually encoded into your video, instead of the video just being in true 2.35:1 widescreen format.

[robl45]

One video I was testing they were hardcoded in. I'm reen coding with no black bars now so that should fix the issue with 2d. Unfortunately, that will not work with 3d.  Mpc can still stretch those but I don't think jriver can.

[robl45]

One video I was testing they were hardcoded in. I'm reen coding with no black bars now so that should fix the issue with 2d. Unfortunately, that will not work with 3d.  Mpc can still stretch those but I don't think jriver can.

Can anyone confirm if there is a setting like mpc's pan and scan settings in jriver that will stretch a video no matter what?

[RD James]

In the madVR Zoom Control options, set it to:

• Detect hard-coded black bars
• Crop black bars
• Notify media player about cropped black bars immediately
• Zoom big black bars away completely

[robl45]

That doesn't work on certain films notably 3d films so that's why I'm trying to find out

[apgood]

That doesn't work on certain films notably 3d films so that's why I'm trying to find out

Maybe it doesn't work in some 3D movies because the movies use the black bars for popout effects like Life of Pi & Ghostbusters and therefore the blackbars are detected as being part of the movie?

[robl45]

No it's something with the doubled resolution.

[RoderickGI]

Can anyone confirm if there is a setting like mpc's pan and scan settings in jriver that will stretch a video no matter what?

Pan and Scan stretches in both directions (Zooms), attempts to find the interesting parts of the video and show that on the screen at full height, which necessarily means it crops some image from the left and right side of the video, which is what you said you don't want.

I'm not aware of any Pan and Scan settings in MC.

Also, I don't think you would get any issue with image doubling when playing 3D if MC and madVR are set up correctly, which means they aren't using side-by-side  or top-and-bottom 3D format.