DVD Ripper DVDFab reporting incorrect picture size?

[Floyd]

I appologize if this has been covered, I was not able to find anything when I searched.

I am using DVDFab 7.0.7.0 DVD to Mobile, (generic AVI XVid Audio copy) and I have noticed my options for output screen resolution vary dramatically and DVD to Mobile gives me different original screen resolution than G-spot and Media Info both.

Here are 3 examples
Babylon 5 Season 1 disk 1 DVDFab 854 x 480
Gilmore Girls Season 1 Disk 1 DVDFab 640 x 480
Eureka Season 1 Disk 1 DVDFab 855 x 480

Gspot and Media info both report as 720 X 480

I am trying to keep the original screen rolution, there is always an option to add "720 x 480" but in the case of Babylon 5, will I be chopping 130 pixels off the sides?

Any thoughts as to what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks

[90312]

What Fab is doing is maintaining the correct aspect ratio to fill your display. You can do what you want but you will introduce black bars on the sides of the display. If you really want to try it, select “Video Effect Settings” then tick “Customized Size” and enter 720x480 which will change the aspect ratio from 1.78 to 1.5 and pull in the sides. You can try it for yourself but I don’t think you’ll like it Floyd.

[Floyd]

What Fab is doing is maintaining the correct aspect ratio to fill your display.

To fill the display on my computer? That wouldn't make sense since it is not 16:9, and it comes up with different maximum resolutions for files than all have the same resolution. For my TV with WDTV Mini (which is what I am using this for) 720 x 480 is okay, you get black on the sides, but in my opinion that is better than loosing picture. If the video is 16:9 great, otherwise 4:3 works for me.

I can understand it giving me a list of sizes that match the aspect ratio of my monitor, but it appears to be reporting the original file resolution incorrectly. In the video effects settings it lists the height correctly at 480, but the width is almost incorrect for some reason.

Again, my only concern is that by selecting 720 x 480, I may be loosing part of the sides. I would think it would default to a maximum (and on some DVDs it has) of 720 x 480 if that is the original resolution of the DVD. At least that is what GSpot and Media Info are reporting.

Very confused.....

[90312]

Every SD disc in region 1 NTSC is 720x480. But they can contain both full screen and wide screen movies on the same disc, they unsqueeze differently by the software in the player. Read this article, it will explain better than I: http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/aspectratios.htm and the computer resolution has nothing to do with any of this.

[Floyd]

90312, thank you for the link, I certainly have more information. However in the case of the DVDs I am currently working with (7 seasons of Gilmore Girls) using the maximum suggested resolution does not work well with the WDTV Mini / LCD TV combination I am using. I find I have a black border all the way around with it being much wider on both ends. With Stargate and Eureka, the maximum resolutions were usually 720 x 404 plus or minus a little on the hight. This works very well and looks great.

I am still a bit concerned that the reported original resolution and maximum resolutions vary by up to 20% within the same season, even on the same DVD. I will have to look at DVDFab version 5 and 6 to see what they list.

I am also comming across another issue, most guides I have read suggest deinterlacing. I have found that to be problematic. I see visible lines at times, att imes of fast motion. I am not sure why, but after reading at the same site that this is more for viewing on computers, and perhape portable players, I have stopped deinterlacing. Of course I think this needs to be evaluated for each movie, or set of disks in a series.

[90312]

Floyd, leave deinterlace off, if you need it you’ll know at once it will look like watching through Venetian blinds. Not much is interlaced anymore.
I am attaching a picture of my TV screen playing a 720x480 DVD with the soft player off. You can see what 720x480 looks like without software expansion. It has been my experience that bigger is better while maintaining the aspect ratio. Less expansion for the software to try to fill in the blanks, I go straight to the top of the list when I intend to play on the TV. It’s like scanning a wallet size picture and trying to make an 8X10 out of it, the quality just doesn’t hold.

[Floyd]

What resolution is your TV? If the screen shot is 720 x 480 it must be about 1900 x 1500??

[90312]

Well you are close Floyd; it’s a 16:9 HD TV so the native frame resolution is 1920x1080.
1920x1080=2,073,600 pixels
720x480=345,600 pixels; or about 17% of available pixels on the TV.
Fortunately for us both the TV and DVD players have processors to scale to the display. So not coincidentally an 8.5GB SD disc divided by a 50GB Blu-Ray disc is 17%. So anyway if you have an HD TV (or even if you don’t) don’t worry about the 720x480 frame resolution, the scaler processor renders it quite meaningless. Just experiment, find a compromise you can live with and go for it.

[Floyd]

That makes more sense, my TV is only 1080, and the 720 scales up with no problem. My DVD collection is just over 450 and growing, so to make my life easier I am converting everything to Xvid so I can reduce the clutter they make, as well as have them in a format my portable player will use. It makes traveling a little less painful.