Encoding ?

BigJohno said:

I have a blu ray rip of the Dark night. Its in MKV format right now. The movie switches between imax (full screen HD) then letter box format. I want to convert for Atv3 and I have done a few test rips. The problem is that it formats the movie in letterbox and gets rid of all those amazing imax quality shots. Is there a way to convert it to mp4 and keep movie in its original state?

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If it's in MKV, the video source should be in h/x264 which the ATV can play. Have you tried simply remuxing it?

Or is it a "pure" BD rip, i.e. 40-something GB? In that case, Handbrake has a button on the far left in the upper right corner called Picture Settings. Make sure Cropping is set to Custom and that the four fields all say "0". Does that work?

besides what hafr said ... hb's auto cropping detection is only as accurate as the number of preview frames it grabs. Hb's default is ten. However, in preferences you can choose up to 30 frames for previews which makes the autocrop etc. more accurate. I highly recommend using 30 frames for the best detection. Just my .02

hafr said:

Make sure Cropping is set to Custom and that the four fields all say "0"

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did you try that? i just did and it worked.

you have to click the arrows to to get the numbers to 0

the problem is that the studio logos at the beginning (52 seconds) are letterboxed so the part of the movie that handbrake scans has the black bars, so it assumes the whole movie does.

BigJohno said:

Well tried both suggestions and still getting the same issue. since the opening scene is in Imax it now has letterbox and is squished. Maybe it cannot be done with handbrake... if only apple would open up.

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Where is this an Apple problem? The film changes formats by directors intention?

BigJohno said:

I'm not saying this is apples problem. I wish itunes would open up to different formats. Like MKV or divix.

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Two things here:

Does the MKV change size when video's aspect ration changes? IIRC that film changes sizes on the DVD between the opening scene and the rest of the movie?

The problem is that the opening scene is so long that the encoding tools want to alter it, which inconsistent with much of the rest of the film?


Second:
MKV and Divx aren't on the AppleTV for a variety of technical and economical/political reasons- aka business contracts. If you want a long list of reasons, PM me and reference this thread, and I'll be happy to oblidge are abbreviated response.

In the picture settings menu, go to the size tab.

Switch cropping from Automatic (which its set to from the ATV preset) to Custom.

Then select the black bar cropping thats optimal for your film, which for dark knight it would be 0's around.

I also attached a reference image of the screen i'm detailing.

spacepower7 said:

Two things here:

Does the MKV change size when video's aspect ration changes? IIRC that film changes sizes on the DVD between the opening scene and the rest of the movie?

The problem is that the opening scene is so long that the encoding tools want to alter it, which inconsistent with much of the rest of the film?


Second:
MKV and Divx aren't on the AppleTV for a variety of technical and economical/political reasons- aka business contracts. If you want a long list of reasons, PM me and reference this thread, and I'll be happy to oblidge are abbreviated response.

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MKV is nothing more than a container file, much like .mp4, .avchd, etc...

MKV also supports multiple audio streams and subtitle stream. the MKV file has a header that tells the MKV demuxer what to do with the actual files that it contains which is passed on to the decoders.

One thing to check is if the theater widescreen content is actually theater wide and not have the letter box encoded in. basicaly what I am saying is that the entire video could be 16:9, just the theater filmed portons have a letterbox encoded into the video.

try encoding the entire video as 16x9. because cropping off the "letter box" which is part of the video it's self. the encoder may apply that area to be croped for the entire length of the movie thus croping the "IMAX" shots.

BigJohno said:

Thank you guys for the info on all the video formats. I took the advice to change the zero all around and moved the anamorphic to strict and it worked.

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glad it worked. here is a couple things about hb that should be said regarding auto cropping and anamorphic ...

Auto cropping is determined by HB by the number of preview sample frames it gets. The default is 10. its ten samples over the entire course of the movie. Thats why I recommended using 30 as it gives hb more samples to decide on but takes a bit longer on scan.

The samples are taken at % spots based on the source. so at 10 samples they are 10% increments. now that said ... hb will use the largest visible frame size or least amount of cropping it detects. So it errors on the side of showing the black bars if you will since that is the least destructive. This works quite well for almost all sources.

You stumbled on a corner case.

Loose anamorphic on hb assumes a modulus of 16 by default unless told different in its picture settings. This is because especially back in the day many players would not playback anything that was not rounded to 16 pixels (PS3 most notably).

Strict anamorphic does not round anything ... as the name implies it uses the sources strict anamorphic settings in the resulting output file. Therefore results in a perfect mirror of the source. Current apple devices and playback software have no issues with strict anamorphic.

I am glad you solved it and though hb's autocrop feature is about as good as any software offers ... it is not infallible. Like I said ... you found the corner case.

Just wanted to explain the behind the scenes take on what you experienced. Glad it worked out.

Just my .02

dynaflash said:

Auto cropping is determined by HB by the number of preview sample frames it gets. The default is 10. its ten samples over the entire course of the movie. Thats why I recommended using 30 as it gives hb more samples to decide on but takes a bit longer on scan.

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Hi dynaflash. Quick question: Why, after setting the preview sample frames to 30 and ensuring anamorphic is set to strict, did Handbrake indeed adjust for the IMAX scenes in Dark Knight Rises but shift everything non-IMAX up one or two hundred pixels? When IMAX scenes are playing, there is a small amount of letterboxing top and bottom with the image centered properly. But when non-IMAX plays, the film is shifted toward the top of my television with letterboxing on top and twice the letterboxing on the bottom?

Is this making sense?

Here...How about a photo: