Im ripping my Bluray collection to NAS and leaving all the movies “as is” but trying to shrink the extras using handbrake.
Ive used many different presets in Handbrake and fiddled with all sorts of settings, disabling crop, disabling and enabling anamorphic etc but Plex on my Nvidia shield and Amazon FireCube (both Android devices) screws up the aspect ratio on playback. VLC on both my devices plays the files perfectly, as does all my players on Windows, its just Plex on Android that screws things up. Sometimes the image is squashed, sometimes its elongated, sometimes it plays right, its inconsistent, Im guessing becuase the original files have different anamorphic metadata?
Its driving me mad and wasting a lot of my time, Ive had to re-rip extras many times as just as it seems to be working, I go back to check things and find a rogue file playing in the incorrect aspect ratio.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Try the H.264 MKV 1080p30 preset (or any of the H.264/H.265 MKV presets). You shouldn’t have to adjust anything on the Dimensions tab for most videos. On the Video tab adjust the frame rate, quality, etc as desired.
On the Shield & Amazon Fire devices, make sure the Plex app has Display Mode = Letterbox. The setting is persistent. You do not have to check it every time you play a video.
Blu-ray extras come in almost every format, resolution, and frame rate. They could be mpeg2, h264, VC-1, interlaced or progressive, 3/2 pulldown, anamorphic video - with any combination of those properties. I’ve even come across a few where the anamorphic flag was set to the wrong display aspect, so even if the software actually uses and follows that info, the result isn’t what is expected.
They are a challenge, I agree. I’m not sure a “one-size fit’s all” approach will always work. I always check the original file with Mediainfo before I even start, to see what I’m dealing with. It gives me a “heads-up” as to which filters/settings, I might have to apply.
I never re-encode videos with an anamorphic setting, and avoid encoding to interlaced video at all times. I resize the video to the proper aspect to avoid the problem some players have with an anamorphic setting. For years, there always seems to be at least one Plex app that develops an allergy to the anamorphic setting. (and yes, I’ve been told a few times on these forums, that I’m doing it wrong)
Disclaimer: I don’t use Handbrake, I generally use ffmpeg to re-encode, but I’m sure there’s a settings and/or filters which achieve the same results. It’s certainly the go-to software for millions around the world.
ok I seem to be getting somewhere now, aspect ratios so far are looking good, however… there is a problem with MKV files. I have tried Handbrake with H264 and H265 (MKV) and Ive tried Shutter Encoder H264 and H265 (MKV) and for some reason I cannot fathom some of my files dont play correctly right from the start, the video shows a paused screen for the first 5-10 seconds while the audio plays from the start and then it catches up and plays fine. If I play the video and then rewind to the beginning it plays fine…bizzare! Mostly, but not always, every now and then they will play from the beginning but mostly not.
However… if I use H265 or H264 and choose MP4 as the container they work perfectly.
Very strange, and annoying, and really, why the hell does Plex have these playback problems when VLC plays everything perfectly every time!!??
