I recently ripped a DVD, which I didn’t realize had been encoded as anamorphic. This means that the picture is 4:3, but stretched top to bottom. When decoded using anamorphic decoding, it’s a proper 16:9 image. However, only in VLC on my PC does this work. Plex players don’t seem to do so, and I can’t seem to find a way to force them to do so with this one. I am sure this has been discussed somewhere, but none of the threads I found were really clear. I just want this movie to “look right” when I play it in my main room, and not just via VLC on my pc.
Anamorphic DVD rip: Plays correctly in VLC when flipped to anamorphic, but not Plex (no way to set?)
DVDs are always anamorphic, i.e. they always use a rectangular pixel shape, instead of a quadratic one. That applies to both 4:3 and 16:9 pictures. The difference is only the aspect ratio of the pixels.
There are 2 ways to set the aspect ratio: in the container and in the video stream.
Plex only cares about the aspect ratio definition in the video stream, while VLC allows the container (MKV) to override what is defined in the video stream.
If you don’t set “anamorphic” while transcoding the ripped MPEG2 video, you end up with a file which behaves like you describe above.
Personally, I have never changed the aspect ratio within a video file, but a quick googling yielded this: https://superuser.com/questions/61894/incorrect-aspect-ratio-in-mp4-h-264-generated-by-samsung-camcorder
I have never tested this, so it might not work in Plex.
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