DVD Ripper Black borders

[bgk]

DVDFAB 8 (DVD to Mobile / DVD Ripper) creates black borders at the top and bottom, where DVDFAB 7 did not - cropping a "widescreen" DVD like The Notebook or Christine (1:2,35, Region 2, PAL) to something like 720:380 or 720:404. Profile: generic divx mp3 avi.

[GregiBoy]

A movie composed at 1:2.35 is going to give you a video size of around 720 x 306 maintaining the correct aspect ratio so if you specify~720 x 400 as the output, I would naturally expect black bars top and bottof of ~50px.

[bgk]

Thanks Gregi for the quick answer. But not true - with DVDFAB 7 I could eliminate all the annoying black borders, up and down, left and right - just crop the video to the desired size (720:404 mostly, which is 1:1,78 which is 16:9). This is not working anymore with DVDFAB 8, at least for me.
Btw, for me this feature is (was?) one of the most important reasons to buy DVDFAB.
No one else having these black borders now with version 8?
Anyway, thanks for your reply.

[GregiBoy]

Are you saying this:-

You used to take a 720 x 306 title, crop out all the black areas and set 720 x 400 and Fab would recompose the image with a stretched aspect ratio?

If that is what you are saying, I must disagree because Fab has NEVER worked like that for me over the past at least 6 years and literally thousands of titles..

In fact, I now always have crop turned off and choose 720 x 400 as the resolution because a lot of media players do as I have described as above, stretch the image in the X dimension and therefore displaying in the incorrect aspect ratio which I dislike intensely.

What are you judging this supposed "INCORRECTNESS" on? A specific player?

[bgk]

No, not so "complicated". I just let DVDFAB start on a DVD, say with 720:306, and then I cut left & right pieces until someting like 720:380 is reached - great result on my 16:9 TV, no annoying black borders (of course the left & right video pieces that I cut off are missing). Btw - did you know that McLeods Daughters (and Monk) where filmed originally in 16:9 format, but the DVDs released at least here in Germany are 4:3 .... the DVD masters did what I am trying to do - just cutting off left & right pieces .... unbelievable .... or?

[GregiBoy]

Sorry, I am now totally confused.

[signals]

I can confirm this, when playing back with VLC. DVDFab seems to be encoding very small black bars top and bottom when it should not, i.e. when the output aspect ratio selection = the decoded aspect ratio of the original. If you look very closely, you can see the bars in the lower preview window on the Video Effects page(s). They are very hard to see in the preview window, but noticeable on playback at 640x266.

I too am completely confused about the authoring on German DVDs.

[bgk]

Thanks to confirm the black bars that DVDFab 8 introduced. Until this bug is fixed, I will (need to) stay on DVDFab 7.

[bgk]

A picture tells more than thousand words. Please see the black bars with automatic crop. Profile used: generic.avi.divx.mp3.

[signals]

Exactly what I am seeing also.