Aspect Ratio and Movie name problems

clement5 wrote on 1/6/2022, 7:14 PM

Aspect ratio handling has been changed in the 2022 version of Movie Edit Pro, with mixed results.
3D is better handled now but differently than before but:
1. If I have a 4k 3D movie (stored as a side by sice AVI) and I wish to ouput it after editing and I select output MP4 3D Side by Side full width, it will produce only a 2D 4k output. It should either produce the correct output or give an error message. If I select 3D side by side half with, it works OK. HD 3D videos are correctly output with Side by Side full width.

In a PAL 720x576 25fps video 4:3 aspect ratio, It is displayed wrong, and the output is incorrect.

1. My movie is set to PAL with the above characteristics. When a PAL input is 4:3 or the set characteristics of the input are set to 4:3 the resuling display size is smaller than the 4:3 window with black letterboxing on R & Left in the editor. During output the preview window also shows letterboxing
2. If I output the video as Lagarith AVI the result looks like the display and has black bars on R&L. If I set the aspect ratio to 5:4, the output is correctly sized. The same thing happens with MP4 output.
3. If I output a single frame as jpg 4:3 the result has 768x576 letterboxed R&L, but the picture is actually correctly 720x576 with the black bars cropped and looks alright. However, if I output the new video, the output of the JPG is a smaller sized image letterboxed on all sides, which is NOT acceptable, especially after spending hours doing the output. The frae output was 07:12.
4. If I output a jpg as 5:4 it has the correct size, but when put into the next editing line of the video, the display is too wide, and the aspect ratio has to be set to 4:3. It does output properly.
5. The JPG problem didn't exist in the older version of the program, and it was possible to output JPGs from anamorphic videsos, edit them, and bring them back to replace a bad frame without any extra diddling. Also, there was no problem with AVI cideos either. The JPG spec as metadata PixelAspectRatio which should be used and the full horizontal/vertical pixel count shoule be preserved in all cases.
6. I know that MP4 has SAR and DAR to specify the aspect ratio. DAT should be set properly, and the output should be exactly the same number of pixels.

The movie name is inconsistently defined:
1. If I have a movie and save it with file name AA, the movie name is AA
But if I edit it and save it as AB, the name is still AA, so output automatically has file name AA. There does not seem to be any way to change this behavior or to change the movie name.
2. Going to the Settings/Movie the two tabs show different movie names.
The Movie setting shows AA, but the Project setting shows Name AB. The two names need to be consolidated as one object and the object should be selectable by the user.

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Comments

johnebaker wrote on 1/11/2022, 2:57 AM

@clement5

I think you may have missed the point of part of my comment - computer monitors and TVs - none CRT devices, mobile phone, tablets, etc all use square pixels.

The issue with DVD pixels is that they do not fit easily in to a digital square world, they are either slightly too narrow/tall or too wide to fit pixel to pixel, so theere is always some form of 'distortion'.

. . . . My preferred photo editor tells me the original pixel size as well as the output size when making the adjustments. . . .

Do you mean the dpi or ppi numbers?

John EB

clement5 wrote on 1/29/2022, 6:10 PM

Magix Support has acknowledged that the aspect ratio problem exists and they said they will discuss it at the next meeting. The problem sometimes comes about because the export doesn't work correctly. I had to adjust the parameters when exporting an image or video to make sure the export matches the movie settings. MEP doesn't seem to set them correctly in all cases.

As to 3D, I create videos from 3D material to put onto YouTube, but sometimes I want to burn a 3D Blu-Ray, so I have to use another app, Cyberlink Power Director. If I want closed captioning, I also use PD. Both PD and MEP tag a side by side 3D output as being 3D, so YouTube obligingly presents it as 3D and some 3D TVs can watch it full screen automatically. I have an LG that does this. There are 3D display programs for various PCs and phones that also can detect 3D. There is a current model Rokit phone that supports glasses free 3D, and a PC can be hooked to a 3D TV or monitor for display.

The maximum size frame that MEP supports is 4k, but the more expensive program supports higher resolution. As a result it is not possible to output a side by side 4K 3D video at full resolution MP4 because that would be 8k. The solutions are either to output the video anamorphically with 2x Horixontal compress, as an HD side by side, or to another format such as AVI and then to use a converter to create the MP4. An attempt to output something which is too wide just yields a lower resolution result, but this is done without notifying the user! They just don't do comprehensive testing on the software to make sure every feature works, including legacy features.

clement5 wrote on 1/29/2022, 7:34 PM

For some reason I am not getting notification of stuff on this stream. I noticed the question about side-by-side or SBS. Side by side is where the 2 3D images, left and right, are stored side by side so if you look at it raw, you see 2 pictures one on the L and the other on the R. The most popular way of doing this is to have the left image on the L just as it was in the old cards and the various formats from the early '50s such as View-Master, Stori-View... This way 3D can be transmitted and processed by the normal methods. But when this is done for TV you get a picture which is twice as wide, so the anamorphic format was used and each picture is comprssed 2X horizontally, which then requires decompression for viewing. There is also an over/under format which has been used.

As to the location of the L or $ images there is a VREX standard that puts the L image on the R by default, and has metadata to indicate the format SBS or Over/under and whether the L image is on the L. There are also standards for HD Blu-Ray compatible 3D/2D disks and for MP4, but not for 4k. YouTube recognizes the MP4 metadata for 3D, and then displays things appropriately either anaglyph (blue-red) or 2D.

MEP supports some of the formats. There is a Fuji standard of a 3D AVI and another for 3D pictures (.MPO) which MEP recognizes. There is also the VREX standard which covers .JPS files, or just SBS or Over/under 3D images packed into a jpg with the extension jps. MEP used to recognized JPS as a standard JPG, but now doesn't recognize it at all. There is another standard that used a suffix -xxx for 3D pictures and images where filename-LR indicates 3D SBS with L image on the L, while -LRQ indicates an anamorphic image with L on the L.

The VREX standard has by default the L image on the R, but most everyone ignores that. Hope this helps.