Aspect Ratio vs Screen Compression

I have DVDFab 6.1.1.2 and found (as some of the members have mentioned) the futility of the aspect ratio option. 99% of the time I just want the video to be the same size and aspect ratio of the original. About 20% of the time the video gets horizontally squished and black bars added to the left and right of the image. A lot of time is spent adjusting the aspect ratio to get the right settings and have wasted many conversions with this issue. I have read the tutorial and there is very little help about best practices or how to get the best conversion.

Questions: Why have aspect options that distort the video?
Why have aspect ratio’s that are larger than the native format?
Why are some movies at 29FPS and some at 23 and how do you know when to select either one?
What is the difference between encoding one pass or two?

Thanks,

You have asked many questions, I'll try to answer a few. This should almost never happen. What profile are you using? DVDFab will normally suggest an output aspect ratio that matches the decoded video. This is defeated in some profiles and works best with automatic cropping enabled. Which profile are you using?

They shouldn't. Because the displayed video is never 720x480 (1.5:1). Modern widescreen transfers have a display aspect ratio of 2.35:1. You don't need to. You can select "same as source" in most cases on the Edit screen or in Common Settings. For a mobile device with a small screen, 2-pass is overkill. For display on a large screen TV, it can make some difference. Two-pass takes not quite twice as long to encode. DVDFab gathers information on the first pass, then encodes on the second. It improves the allocation of the available bits.

I don't know if i understand you well but what i do to avoid the squished problem is to use an aspect ratio that is close to the dvd one or video. For example if it is a movie widescreeen 1.78 i pick 1.70 or 1.76 at a 23 frps to make it run smoother.


The profile i use is 25 fps / 384kbps / 1.76 aspect ratio (480x272) or 1.81 aspect (320x176) for the movie SAW which the original aspect is 1.85:1 so the only thing i really change depending on the movie is the aspect ratio.

Hey lizardo and Bandalier,

In order to avoid distortions like squishing (or stretching), as I understand it, you shouldn’t change the aspect ratio at all.

Don’t confuse the “wide-screen” aspect ratio of the original film with the screen resolution that you need to select for your mobile device.

Select the screen resolution for your mobile device from the list (or add a “Custom Size” in the “Resize” tab). DVDFab will then resize the original “wide screen” video to fit your player’s screen dimensions based on your selection. The aspect ratio displayed on the screen will not change, meaning there shouldn’t be any stretching distortions. However because the image is being shrunk, you will see black bars (letterboxing) on the top and bottom.

To get rid of the black bars, you still keep the same resolution that your player uses, but you need to crop the wide-screen video. (Cropping is different than resizing.)

After you've selected the device screen size (resolution), go to the “Crop” tab where you’ll see a “Letterbox” / “Pan&Scan” slider. Use the slider to select how much of the video will be cropped in order to fill the screen of your mobile device. You can select some black bars, not so much, or no black bars at all (Pan&Scan).

Hope this helps a little!

Cheers,

Organdude