Aspect ratio in snapshot

[smotyndu]

When I try snapshot (thanks for re-introducing it as promised) I get an aspect ratio problem in that the snapshot does not reflect either the movie aspect ratio or the window aspect ratio (eg when there are black bands)

The image seems to compress horizontally as if squashing 16x9 into 4x3. Altering aspect ratio changes display but not the snapshot. Confusingly this does not happen with every DVD.


???

[smotyndu]

Sample images

Further to post above I backed my copy of the DVD of Violette (2013) to an ISO file using DVDfab.

I then played the ISO file in Mediaplayer with Aspect Ratio at default setting and took some snapshots. I then did the same using current version of VLC (2.1.4).

You can see from the images (DropBox link) that the Mediaplayer snapshot has a clearly compressed aspect ratio. The images are unchanged from the originals apart from resizing to a common height of 450 pixels to facilitate comparison - the VLC image has a ratio of 16:9 but the Mediaplayer image has a a ratio less than 4:3.

How do I fix this?ox.com/lightbox/home/DVDfab[/URL]

[SeeMoreDigital]

Are you able to provide example images?

I suspect they will be either 720x480 or 720x576 without aspect ratio signalling to correct their shape...

[smotyndu]

Comparison images in dropbox:
MediaPlayer

Correct aspect ratio from VLC

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mk6ccdwpy1ky156/violette_vlc.jpg

Yes if I resize width to 720 all images come out at 720x576 regardless whether the original was 4:3, 16:9 or whatever.

It only seems to affect DVDs but not Blu-rays so snapshot from Bad Grandpa gives 1024x576 image.

MediaPlayer has Aspect Ratio in Control set to Default

[SeeMoreDigital]

As suspected, DVDFab Media Player captures DVD images at the DVD sources native pixel size, which is 720x480 pixels for NTSC sources or 720x576 pixels for PAL sources.

All video images on DVD are encoded using 'non-square' pixels. The pixels are re-shaped to the correct aspect ratio upon playback.

Blu-ray image captures will always be at the correct shape because (unlike DVD) they are encoded using 'square' pixels...

It might be worth making an official feature request to the DVDFab Media Player developers

[smotyndu]

Thanks for clarifying. It was throwing me that it happened with DVDs & not Blu-rays; also as I was using a bigger window size I hadn't realised that they were defaulting to a 720x576 as I just appeared to be getting different degrees of compression based on original aspect ratio.

Not sure that this is a feature request.

I think it's a bug based on:
1) it makes the DVD snapshot function worthless
2) it used to work properly in Version 1 of MediaPlayer

One can, of course, work round it by taking a snapshot in VLC and using the comparison to work out the aspect ratio adjustment movie by movie. Too much hassle and the only advantages are marginally better original snapshot quality and the ability to snapshot larger than 576 pixels high.

Alternatively I could use VLC to snapshot DVDs and MediaPlayer to snapshot Blu_rays. BUT something that cost me $99 for a licence OUGHT to work better than a free piece of software.

[smotyndu]

Fixed: v 2.0.0.7

This seems to be fixed in the latest update - 2.0.0.7 (30/05/2014)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Nice one