Different video aspect ratios don't all display [#1468560]

I am not able to display combinations of 16x9 and 4x3 content with the same content type without distortion for one or the other. Is there a way to have the source video's dimensions drive the display so that there is no pillar- or letter-boxing?

Comments

Comment #1

Jorrit commented 23 May 2012 at 20:04

Component:	Video Players	» Video Transcoding
Assigned:	Unassigned	» Jorrit
Category:	support	» feature

The information is currently not stored, unfortunately. I am marking this as a feature request. I hope to have time for this in the near future.

Comment #2

michael.k commented 23 May 2012 at 20:43

Thank you, yes this would be very helpful as I have a wide variety of content to display, at 16:9 and 4:3 for NTSC and PAL.

NTSC and PAL get complicated: 640x480, 640x486, 720x576, plus non-square pixel conversions. There is also the important Academy/Blu-Ray ratio of 2.40:1 and the US Theatrical ratio of 1.85:1, among many others. (See http://240.mkfilms.org for my analysis of some of these ratios.)

Plus, now because of iPhone, iPad and other mobile device recording, all the common video aspect ratios are in portrait orientation, too!

Hmm, perhaps a lightbox option or the ability to display the files in a new browser window would work because of the built-in support for media files?

Thanks for considering this issue.

Comment #3

MilosL commented 10 November 2013 at 22:22

@michael.k
if i understand your request aright, you are looking for option, where display aspect ratio provided by original file will not be changed. This means if the original file has no pillars or letterbox bars, encoded file should also has have none.
So at the end, the output-side should be responsible for scaling/ letterboxing to match the clients display. For scaled output without letterbox bars, the player must know at least one dimension - e.g. width - and height will be computed based on aspect ratio. Result: pictures are not distorted, but each video can have different height.

For video module at the input side this means: we need additional option to set encoding dimensions through only one selectable parameter (width or height). The option "keep original dimensons" should be also available.

Similary at the output side (player formatter):
Option 1: If only one parameter for player is provided, missing second parameter has to be computed.
Option 2: For fixed-size player (width & height) we need options as filled(distorted), scaled (letterboxed), filled(scaled and cropped) - probably you know it from your TV.

@Jorrit: What do you think about it? If you are interested, i can begin with implementation. What's about php-ffmpeg usage ?
Have you already idea, where should be stored metadata for original and encodings ?

Comment #4

Tsubo commented 6 December 2013 at 13:53

If I understand right... the issue is not with encoding...(at least not with Zencoder option) but with the display formatter. The display currently has fixed size/aspect - so what we need is function to re-write output based on aspect of the encoded file....

Make sense?