Home DVD conversion cuts off portion...

[MrMister111]

I have a home DVD of daughter's dance, its at 720x576, but running it through a few conversions using iVi Pro and Handbrake it outputs at 704x400 for some reason.

This is no good, as then watching the resulting mp4 file, a portion is cut off on the top/bottom.

Why is it doing this? is there anything I can do? I want to convert it to mp4 for safe keeping as the DVD will get lost/scratched, and all my home vids are stored in iCloud Photo library as well.

thanks

 

[ColdCase]

Is the viewer you are using to watch the video set to crop (in its preferences) ?

 

[MrMister111]

Is the viewer you are using to watch the video set to crop (in its preferences) ?

I'm not trying to view, I'm trying to convert the DVD to a mp4 file.

If I play it on the app DVD player on my iMac it shows at 720X576 though in the get info box

 

[ftaok]

Whenever I see 576, I immediately think of PAL (which is the European analog tv standard). The US uses NTSC.

Perhaps your footage is in PAL (which the Mac/PC should be able to play fine), but you're settings in Handbrake/iVi are set at NTSC.

 

[MrMister111]

Sorry it is PAL I'm in UK. Settings are all for UK

 

[Boyd01]

Sorry, I don't know anything about iVi Pro. But Handbrake will let you control the picture size. As a default, it tries to automatically set the size and my experience is that this doesn't always work so well. If there are dark edges in parts of the video, it may crop them out of the picture.

I found one simple thing that can help, go to the advanced preferences and set the number of picture previews to the maximum (60). I *think* Handbrake uses these previews to determine the default size, so examining more stills can prevent it from cropping out parts that you want.

But probably you'll need to go into the Picture settings and manually make some changes. Un-check "keep aspect ratio", set anamorphic to "none" and enter 576 x 720 in the height/width boxes. Also set cropping to custom and enter zeroes for everything. Now use the preview button to see if it looks right. If so, go ahead and encode.

I find this dialog rather confusing and counter-intuitive, but with a little trial and error I can usually get the results I want.

 

[ColdCase]

I'm not trying to view, I'm trying to convert the DVD to a mp4 file.

If I play it on the app DVD player on my iMac it shows at 720X576 though in the get info box

Sorry I thought you were saying that when you view the video you see it cropped, and you'd rather see letterbox.. which may be a viewer preference thing.

 

[MrMister111]

tried Handbrake and still, although detects the correct input, still outputs at the same wrong resolution, even when I manually set the output! so strange and frustrating...

 

[Boyd01]

Did you specifically do these things I suggested?

Un-check "keep aspect ratio", set anamorphic to "none"

Does it show the full picture in the Handbrake preview?

 

[MrMister111]

Did you specifically do these things I suggested?

Un-check "keep aspect ratio", set anamorphic to "none"

Does it show the full picture in the Handbrake preview?

well I did (or thought I did), the first time, didn't work same problem. Went back on today, did what you said, went to custom, set to 0, put anamorphic to strict, and this time it worked! kept the correct resolution! at last

thanks

 

[Boyd01]

Great! As I said before, "I find this dialog rather confusing and counter-intuitive". I often have to mess around a bit to get things right too. And when I find settings that work for a certain type of video, I usually take a screenshot of the picture settings window for future reference.

 

[MrMister111]

Great! As I said before, "I find this dialog rather confusing and counter-intuitive". I often have to mess around a bit to get things right too. And when I find settings that work for a certain type of video, I usually take a screenshot of the picture settings window for future reference.

Thanks for your help, although used HB before always just used the presets.