Simple feature - Force aspect ratios

[daiei27]

I'm ripping our entire DVD collection using the DVD to DVD Main Movie option. DVDFab has been great for most, but some of the main features are 16:9 widescreen movies being detected and ripped as 4:3 fullscreen.

I'm only on E, but here are the movies I've come across so far:
10 Things I Hate About You
Armageddon
Boondock Saints
Cool Runnings
Emma
(I've only done about 50 movies so at this point there are 1 in 10 with this issue)

As you can guess, this means when I play it back on a widescreen display, the movie is shrunken down with black bars all around (top-bottom because it is widescreen stuffed into a fullscreen resolution, left-right because it is a fullscreen resolution playing on a widescreen display). I wonder if anyone else has noticed DVDs that act like this...

After some investigation, I realized this is probably not a DVDFab issue. Rather, the studios simply put out DVDs with incorrect DVD info in the .IFO files. I managed to work around it by using IfoEdit to edit all the 4:3 references (since I didn't know which were important) to 16:9. If anyone has a simpler workaround, please mention it here.

It would be great if DVDFab could add a feature so you can force aspect ratios in the DVD info for problematic DVDs. No messing with the actual video or anything like that. It seems this would be relatively easy to add and it would be a great help for n00bs like I was.

[AlienX69]

Not as simple as you think ...

http://www.google.com/search?q=dvd+aspect+ratio&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Some DVD's are produced in LETTERBOX format, i.e. 1.85 or 2.35 in a 1.33 frame, hence the black bars. Perfect example is one of my favorite movies that has never been released in Anamorphic format ..... "The Abyss" (read the "Customer Reviews").... still waiting though !!


EDIT: You have to use the ZOOM feature on your TV to remove the bars, 1.85 = no bars, 2.35 > will still have bars top and bottom !!

[daiei27]

You are right in that the problem is not simple and I still do not know all there is to know about it. However, I have proven the workaround can be simple.

The option to force a widescreen movie (no matter if it's 1.85 or 2.35) to actually be the appropriate aspect ratio (by modifying the IFO file in the output) would be an easy fix that would make a big difference. I hope the devs monitor these forums and take this suggestion seriously.

[signals]

You will find that newer versions of some titles do not have the problem. The original DVD release of GoodFellas was this way, the newer ones are not. I think you will find that the fix will not work on some titles (it will likely make them look squashed), which is one reason it is not such a simple thing to make the correction automatic.

[daiei27]

I agree. I don't think you can easily detect when this needs to happen, but it's pretty obvious to the user when this is necessary. If there is an option, the user can select it and hope for better results. Doesn't that sound reasonable?

Thanks for such quick replies by the way!