The movie is "The Leathernecks have landed" and the frame should be 4:3. Yes the sidebars are burned in. The original had been transferred to digital from an unknown source, possibly a 16mm movie, but could have been captured from a TV broadcast. It was obviously at some point in VHS format due to the usual bottom bar which is often diagonal.

The video could not be detelecined by the usual methods because it had 2 progressive frames followed by 3 interlaced frames. So Avisynth was used with the following script.

source = DirectShowSource("output.vob").ConvertToYUY2()
source
#AviSource("E:\Temp\Numbered Woman\Numbered Woman IVTCbl,Dsh,Neag 0-22-00-00.avi")
#ConVertToYV12(interlaced=true)
AssumeTFF()
#AssumeBFF
TDeint(mode=1)  #Bob frames
#TDeint(mode=2)    #Bob and match frames
srestore(23.976)

I use VirtualDub Deshaker to fix the whole frame shaking in old movies. It has the advantage of working well, with lots of adjustments including picking the area to analyze, unlike most of the others. I try to preserve as much of the original by the following: Move the picture down so as to halve the ragged VHS induced edge at the bottom..Add 8 pixels on each side using VirtualDub, Then use VD BorderControl to extrapolate the good part of the edges. Then Deshaker is used to fix the entire movie. Also, in this case I used BorderControl to create the black sidebars, which I probably should not have done in retrospect. Then using VD I cropped it back to the standard 720x480 for working with MMS. After creating a good version which requires much juggling with various VD filters and frame editing I will crop the top and bottom which are ragged due to the VHS stage before I got it.

The original movie would have been 4:3, but due to processing before I got it the actual framing was lost. It is possible that it may have gone through a couple stages of makind DVDs with various pixel resolutions. It is likely that it may be correctly 4:3 in between the sidebars. The codec used to store the movie is compressed lossless Intel IYUV. I can properly change the pixel resolution to achieve the correct aspect ratio, but I would need to be able to see somethng which is perfectly round like a wagon wheel.

While the speculation about the actual framing is interesting. The real problem submitted to Magix support is about how it can't handle the aspect ratio correctly for either display or export. I think the export is correct if the pixel size is 720x480, but that size doesn't work for the display, which makes using pictures difficult. Then there is the difficulty of creating an MP4 where the metadata specifies 4:3, but the pixel ratio is 720:480. The last update caused some of these problems, but some were creates several versions ago. Powerdirector works without these problems, but is not as congenial compare to MMS for the stuff I am doing.

Some may be wondering why I am bothering with this video. It is one of the few videos where my grandfather Clay Clement had a big part instead of tiny ones. He plays commandant. I got another copy, from a different vendor, but it has ghost telecining on almost every frame, so it could not be restored. This copy has a problem that some details near the bottom jitter which is only revealed after deshaking. To fix it requires a lot of frame editing plus extreme temporal smoothing on just those sections. I think this is caused by some film movement during capture along with the compression algorithm. If the original is VHS I might be able to reconvert it to digital without creating a DVD and that might get rid of the detail shaking.

@clement5

Greetings,

There seems to be a lot of brainpower being expended on this. Can I throw this into the pot? It's the method I use for such a problem of which it seems I have more than my fair share 🤓.

It doesn't answer the "bug" problem or if it should or shouldn't do something but it I've found it a quick and simple way around the problem.

AndyW

@clement5

Hi John C

. . . . my grandfather Clay Clement . . . .

I did wonder if there was a connection when I saw your grandfather's name in the credits.

. . . . If the original is VHS . . . .

I suspect that this was originally was a recording capture from the original film, probably not done professionally as you can see dust specks and something is caught in the film gate eg:

to VHS tape, which was then digitised, you can see typical VHS recording artifacts and jitters in places:

.

From a quick search on Google it appears this classic movie has been commercially transferred to DVD.

John EB

As I said the original movie had been badly mangled as to aspect by being transferred from one medium to another, so I masked off the R & L edges. I will either mask the top and bottom edges and possibly increase the size of the final version. The latest rekindling of MMS has more issues. The Test 1 is 30min long so that Magix can verify the problems when Test 1 is exported to an AVI, but the frame rate is correct for an MP4 export and lines up with Test 1. So I have to use VirtualDub to pick sections to export and edit separately. The timing on VD is different from MSS bacuse it gives HR:MIN:SEC:dec fraction, drat.

Of course none of the drop downs match the actual movie aspect ration, but it is almost 4:3, and I doubt anyone could see the difference. The STD Hollywood aspect should be a slightly letterboxed 4:3, but they are often pillarboxed for Blu-Ray with the video area presumably the Hollywood 1.37:1 aspect..

@clement5

There is a porthole at 3:30 that can be used to sort out the aspect. As I said previously, I think it's 4:3 provided the image is stretched horizontally to fit a 4:3 frame. As discussed, it's actually only 1.33 to 1 due to the known AVI import bug.

Secondly, I'd question the need to export to AVI from MMS. You can do everything you need to do in VDub ie process the AVISynth script (or do the IVTC using the VDub filter for that), resize it to square pixel 4:3 ie 720x540 or 1440x1080, then export out of VDub using a lossless but compressed codec, then import that into MMS and do your bits and pieces eg cropping and export the final in H264 with square pixels.

Of course none of the drop downs match the actual movie aspect ration

It's a consumer NLE that costs less than $100. You can't expect it to do everything. And in any case, it is easy enough to set up the movie settings to 1.37:1 (just type in 1370:1000 in the ratio box) and the video properties to the same.

The STD Hollywood aspect should be a slightly letterboxed 4:3, but they are often pillarboxed for Blu-Ray with the video area presumably the Hollywood 1.37:1 aspect..

There's no need to set up any side bars. Any computer/phone player will just expand the image to fit (in this case, maximise the vertical, so black bits will be visible on the sides). Any modern TV will do the same. We used to put bars on to stop a player stretching, but that need has long gone.

The problem with aspect ratio is that there are 2 definitions for it. One definition relies on the number of pixels horizontally and vertically. The other is the display aspect ratio which tells subsequent programs how to display the particular image. The solution in VD is very simple, use the aspect ratio parameter only as the display ratio and not as an indicator of how many pixels. Then the resolution or pixel count determines what is exported. In the case of AVI, the aspect ratio would be ignored because AVI does not support it as metadata. MP4 does support it and that is exactly what VD does for that codec. JPG apparently doesn't support display ratio, so the JPG should be an exact copy pixel by pixel if the resolution for the export is the same as the movie resolution. this should be same for other picture formats. There could be a compromise solution by having a check box that makes the export conform to the aspect ratio. This would change the number of pixels width:height to achieve this and use bicubic interpolation to make the image fit within the resulting frame. This second option is what you want if you wish to print or display just the exported frame from the video. But not if you wish to edit it and put it back. Picture editors do have some options like that and Paint Shop Pro does this in the resize filter. Of course that is a Corel product, not a Magix product.

At present the aspect ratio does all kinds of damage. To make a video export match the movie, the aspect has to be kluged. To make an imported image match the video viewing window the vertical has to be modified. This makes it match in the video window. But then it doesn't match in the exported video. To make that match the vertical must be 480 for my video and the horizontal must be stretched. The details are in the text document in my shared OneDrive box.

Yes, I know that VD can be used for exporting clips and images correctly, but I still have to assemble the final result using MMS. This is very difficult when still images have to be combined, because I have to change the parameters for viewing in MMS differently than for export. My restorations have many different pieces that have to fit together and it is easy to miss something that needs to be changed for export. I have to do the frame editing in photoshop extended in clips of no more than about 2+ minutes because it often gags on longer than that.

Using VD to export sections or clips for editing is difficult to get it correct as to the starting point.

The solution in VD is very simple, use the aspect ratio parameter only as the display ratio and not as an indicator of how many pixels. Then the resolution or pixel count determines what is exported. In the case of AVI, the aspect ratio would be ignored because AVI does not support it as metadata. 

That's why I always export AVI out of VDub in the actual display ratio I want ie 720x540, 768x576 or 1440x1080. Then when I import it into MMS, it displays correctly.

 To make a video export match the movie, the aspect has to be kluged. To make an imported image match the video viewing window the vertical has to be modified. This makes it match in the video window. But then it doesn't match in the exported video. To make that match the vertical must be 480 for my video and the horizontal must be stretched. 

But this is video 101 though. Set your movie settings to what you want for export (why wouldn't you?) then import your objects. If one doesn't fit the movie frame size, you'll have to crop/zoom it vertically or horizontally (or leave the black bars there, as I do with slideshows which contain scans of old pics that cannot be cropped into 16-9). There is no other way of doing it. You simply can't have varying object sizes/ratios and have them all fit neatly into one particular export window.

Yes, and I am doing the export from VD of sections to edit, but even then the import is a problem for stills. They need to be adjusted for proper output, but what you see in the video window is not what ends up being exported for stills. So there is no way to adjust things properly without a lot of back and forth. The exception is where there does not have to be position adjustments. The only time stills seem to be properly adjusted for both the video window and export seems to be for B&W mask for chroma key. Exporting from VD just slows down the process. MMS needs to be fixed. Also, the aspect ratio problem for MP4 also needs to be fixed. True I can probably scope out a way to set the exif aspect ratio using another program, but I shouldn't have to do that, and it is just another time wasted step. This problem didn't happen in much older versions. They really bollixed it. From what I can see they created gobs of individual code for each export rather than combining it into common subroutines.

I "still" don't understand. Why are you exporting stills from VDub?

If you export them (or otherwsie process them in a 3rd party program) at the display frame size of your Magix movie setting, you will not have a problem. For example, if your movie has a height of 480 pixels and a ratio of 4:3, the image to fill the screen will have to be 640 pixels, or 1440x1080. or 1920x1440.

Can you give us a detailed example of a still that doesn't import properly?

Also, the aspect ratio problem for MP4 also needs to be fixed. 

What exactly is the issue? I've never had a problem with MP4s from MMS not displaying correctly in other players.

Are you saying your exports are too quashed either vertically or horizontally?