Makemkv changes aspect ratio of DVD rip. How to fix it?

General Discussions
1

Hi All

I haven’t see this come up on any forum searches, surprisingly, so could do with some help.

I’ve been ripping DVDs in mkv, then using Handbrake to convert them (thanks JuiceWSA for all the help there) I’ve run into a problem where Makemkv seems to change the aspect ratio of my film/tv show. The cover/box will say it is 1.78 or 1.85 widescreen and yet when I rip it it comes out as 1.33/ 4:3 ratio. MediaInfo confirms its not my imagination.

I know I can use handbrake to correct this. But I’m not sure how. It is just a case of setting the width. If so what width for what ratio? Is there something in Makemkv settings that I’ve missed?

Any help would be appreciated ???

2

it’s probably anamorphic.

3

see if this helps you:

4

Can you share some examples, screenshots, mediainfo?

I’m a little bit worried you’re talking about changing width. MakeMKV and Handbrake usually get this correct, unless you monkey with it. :slight_smile:

MakeMKV rips the video directly from disk. MakeMKV is aware if a DVD was 4:3 or 16:9, but not the content of the video itself, or any letterboxing to get to the final presentation aspect ratio.

If you are looking at the raw MakeMKV rip you may see a different aspect ratio.

EVERY DVD, regardless of aspect ratio, is stored as 720x480 (or PAL is 720x576). And every DVD is either 4:3 or 16:9. It takes a bunch of funny business to get a movie formatted onto a DVD. There’s always stretching or squishing and often matting.

Early DVDs were all 4:3 - TVs were 4:3, after all. But DVDs are stored as 720x480, which isn’t 4:3. They aren’t square pixels. So at playback, they’re squished horizontally to appear as 4:3. It’s nuts. :peanuts:

When a “widescreen” movie was distributed on a 4:3 DVD, it was letterboxed into that 4:3 frame for your 4:3 TV. If it was a 16:9 movie (taking the 4:3 DVD “squish” into account) there were about 56 black pixels on the top and bottom, and only about 720x368 pixels of video data. Movies with shorter (wider) ratios had even fewer real pixels, and even more wasted black pixels.

Later, 16:9 TVs and 16:9 DVDs became available. These were still stored as 720x480, but now they were wider pixels - at playback they were stretched out to 16:9 instead of squished to 4:3. :exclamation:

Those 16:9 DVDs were sometimes marketed as “anamorphic widescreen”. Technically EVERY DVD is anamorphic, because they’re all stored and displayed at different ratios. When you see “anamorphic” on a case it’s almost certainly a 16:9 DVD, but not every 16:9 DVD is labeled “anamorphic”. :crazy_face:

DVD only supports 4:3 and 16:9. Movies shorter (wider) than 16:9 are always encoded on the disk with black letterboxing bars.

SO, back to MakeMKV and Handbrake.

  • MakeMKV should rip 720x480 (or 720x576) and preserve the embedded 4:3 or 16:9 info. You shouldn’t ordinarily change dimensions in MakeMKV. MakeMKV knows if it’s a 4:3 or 16:9 DVD, including pixel ratios, but isn’t aware of the contents of the video or if there is letterboxing or not.

  • Handbrake should recognize the storage and display dimensions, and preserve the “anamorphic” nature of the DVD. Leave Anamorphic on Auto unless you understand why you’re changing it.

  • If you have a 4:3 video on a 4:3 DVD, or a 16:9 video on a 16:9 DVD, you don’t need to do any cropping in Handbrake. TV episodes often don’t need cropping. Many movies do.

  • Let Handbrake make a cropping guess. Hit “Preview” and verify. It’s almost always OK.

  • The “Storage Size” dimensions will be reduced because black pixels have been cropped off. Good!

  • The “Display Size” dimensions should now be about the ratio you expect the movie to be. Width / Height.

Is that helpful, or more confusing?

Share screenshots. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
5

Hi,

You can always fix the aspect ratio in the MKV, using MKVTOOLNIX.
Use the Header Editor and change the Video Display Width to fit the desired ratio.

6

Throughly confused :thinking:

Ok so first off I’m in PAL land so I know the DVD is 720x576. The boxes of the DVDs in question show 1.85 Widescreen. So I was expecting a widescreen picture with letterboxing top and bottom.

20200923_2242151
20200923_2242151612×816 149 KB

20200923_2242061
20200923_2242061612×816 209 KB

So I assume I’m not wrong in my expectations?

So Mediainfo gives the respective info.

aspect ratios 1
aspect ratios 1808×594 74.6 KB

aspect ratios 2
aspect ratios 2807×595 78.8 KB

And VLC plays like this

aspect ratios 3
aspect ratios 3963×519 57.4 KB
aspect ratios 4
aspect ratios 4965×518 45.4 KB

I had a look at the page damtor suggested and I’ve used MKVtooNix to set the aspect ratio manually by going via the multiplex tab - video properties - set aspect ratio and chose 1.85 (I tried 16:9 but it didn’t look quite right still, before I reread the box and realised it said 1.85 not 16:9)

This leaves me with

aspect ratios 5
aspect ratios 5805×591 72.9 KB

aspect ratios 6
aspect ratios 6962×520 52.5 KB

My pc monitor is a 1920x1080 screen. Shouldn’t it still have letter boxing top and bottom rather than right and left if it is properly set at 1:1.85 ratio?

I’m not unhappy with the way it looks. Am I still missing something or have I done something wrong with it? I haven’t passed it though Handbrake yet.

7

Have you deliberately chosen problematic disks, or just been unlucky? :slight_smile:

Apparently “A Life Less Ordinary” was prepared poorly at the DVD Factory - others have mentioned the same problem with that release. It looks like it was encoded as 4:3 although it’s 16:9. That does happen sometimes.

Changes Aspect Ratio - www.makemkv.com

Because it’s from DVD, I believe that 1.78 would be the technically correct ratio to use. From your screenshot, it does appear to have a small amount of letterboxing built in (as expected for 1.85 in 16:9). But use whichever setting makes it look good to you - Cameron and Ewan are so skinny it will be hard to tell. :slight_smile:

B5: Crusade, on the other hand, looks like it SHOULD be 4:3. In that screenshot the proportions look right in the first example. I think the case has the wrong information printed.

Considering when it was produced, it was probably 4:3. This link implies it was released as 4:3:

Babylon 5 DVD Releases | The Babylon Project | Fandom

Who are you going to believe, the sticker on a DVD case or your own eyes? :slight_smile:

8

They are anamorphic the video is 4:3 but a DVD has things in it that a DVD player can read and stretches to display it at the needed aspect ratio with you none the wiser. When you take out the video stream with something like MakeMKV you just get the raw video stream. like a photo without the exif data.

You need to use something like MKVtoolnix or Handbrake and edit the display width but leave the height alone. I’m sure if you google “mkvtoolnix fix anamorphic video” you will find others that needed to do the same thing.

if the raw video is 720x576 is 4:3 then you need to to the math to increase the width to make it whatever 1.85:1 ratio would be. Which i think is 1066x576 but it is late and my math may be wrong. basically you need to manually stretch the video in one direction.

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