In the end I think in this long and winding thread we provided lots of evidence that a better naming scheme CAN be implemented, and even a simpler naming scheme ditching the nuances. I think we can all agree on that, and hope Plex will take care of this sooner or later (I’m aware this is not mission critical 
)
@leelynds said:
@JuiceWSA said:
I picked up a PAL Documentary encoded by The Wombat Squad @ 852x488 and Plex reported it as 576p, if you can believe it. It should have been SD, of course because it’s not 480 or 576.Sorry, I’m not following the logic.
If I use your guide, I am supposed to set the display width for a DVD to 854 and keep the 480 original lines of resolution. as well as set the anamorphic flag. …snip…
Ok, that’s enough of that… 
The item came from BBC over the air TV. I saw that, it’s a good three hour Doc., and was looking forward to a few hours of a nice 576p visual experience about an interesting topic. I got Wombat Poo instead.
Master Wombat should have left it packed up just like it came over the air at 720x576 (or possibly 704x576 - I would have gladly accepted that as well) with a proper anamorphic width setting of 1024 that would have resulted in a Display Width of 1024x576 - the perfect dimensions for a 16:9 Display.
Master Wombat decided to go for something completely out of whack (only Master Wombat knows for sure) and make some off the wall dimensions that are a genetic power-tool-food-chopper version of both NTSC and PAL, but never quite making it to either category. Kinda like Horseshoes and Hand Grenades - get kinda close and hope for the best.
Not expecting a lot from Master Wombat I would have gleefully accepted the full 1024x576 - but NoooooOOOOOoooo!
Seeing the 852 I was half expecting a 25fps PAL version of an NTSC 854x480, but again, NoooooOOOOoooo!
This kind of crap right here convinces me that Plex is chasing their tails trying to make Plex conform to Wombat Encoding Standards, in a world where Wombats don’t have a Standard, and wouldn’t follow them even if they did! Plex obviously failed a few hundred times when they smashed themselves into the reality that chasing Wombats wasn’t going to be that easy so decided it was much easier to call 640x480 480p and call EVERYTHING ELSE 576p to cover all the PAL Wombat possibilities while shoving a ball of Plastique the size of a Florida Grapefruit down the shorts of almost every NTSC encode on Planet Earth.
Hey Plex! Stop trying to change the Industry Standard. Stop trying to chase Wombats. Find out what the Industry Standards actually are. Use @leelynds ’ most excellent chart if you have to and come up with some formula that doesn’t explode the undies of half (or more) of the proper DVD encodes on Planet Earth and let’s go with that.
720x576/704x576 is absolutely going to be 576p
720x480/704x480 is absolutely going to be 480p
Throw in some padding if you think it’s necessary, but personally I would call anything else SD because anything else is poor encoding (either by mistake or design - just for you @leelynds ), but it’s hard to say exactly how many Wombats you have on the Team, to be honest. I’m sure there are a few or we wouldn’t be here where we are right now!
Case in point – your guide for BluRay ripping, says to crop the video to 1920X800. You do expect that video to be reported as 1080p, don’t you? Not 720p cause it’s closer to that resolution, and certainly not SD because it doesn’t fit in any category…
1920x800 is reported as 1080p, but Super-Duper-Pooper-Scooper Widescreen comes in at 1920x7something and get’s reported as 720p. I’m ok with that.
It doesn’t matter (really) what the dimensions are for HD material, you basically are at the mercy of whatever arrives and I’m willing to let Plex make a few mistakes in this area without me making too much of a fuss about it. 1920x7something is going to be Super-Duper-Pooper-Scooper Widescreen (The Hateful Eight, Lawrence of Arabia, etc.) and will probably get reported as 720p. That’s been happening ever since Plex dropped out of Mom on that Subway Platform so I’m not that worried about it.
Some BluRay manufacturers get more on some medium than others I guess. It depends on the Master they’re working from. The user just makes the width 1920 or 1280 and the height is what it is. The aspect ratio remains a constant, but it may vary a little in the reporting from the original on film, but that’s down to how the Master was encoded. So long as Robert Conrad doesn’t look like James Stewart it’s all good as far as I’m concerned.
If Plex isn’t going to try to fix that, but try to chase Wombats off a cliff in 480p/576p territory where there are absolute standards that comprise proper encodes I am going to take issue with that.
@JuiceWSA said:
Master Wombat should have left it packed up just like it came over the air at 720x576 (or possibly 704x576 - I would have gladly accepted that as well)
Yes, if it was on the air it was probably 704x576, 16:9 aspect ratio.
Not expecting a lot from Master Wombat I would have gleefully accepted the full 1024x576 - but NoooooOOOOOoooo!
Seeing the 852 I was half expecting a 25fps PAL version of an NTSC 854x480, but again, NoooooOOOOoooo!
It’s this “in-betweennes” that is really turning me mad 
Was it anamorphic? With square pixels it’s ~1.75:1, is it even an aspect ratio?!?!
Stop trying to chase Wombats.
Well said!
720x576/704x576 is absolutely going to be 576p
720x480/704x480 is absolutely going to be 480pThrow in some padding. Personally I would call anything else SD, but it’s hard to say exactly how many Wombats you have on the Team, to be honest. I’m sure there are a few or we wouldn’t be here where we are right now!
This is the last resort, it’s reasonable and easier than anything else.
Speaking of Wombats:
I am ready to start the SG-1 reruns (again) and thought I’d begin this time with Stargate (1994) (at 576p oddly - since it was 480p), an item I’ve had for ever, but never watched, acquired from a family member via some unknown (and obviously Wombatted) source. I hit play and it started playing, but noticed it was 7 hours and 40 minutes long and didn’t have any video preview thumbs. Odd, you say? Very.
I remuxed it in the hopes that would fix it, but no soap. It’s rotten to the core.
Deleted. BluRay en-route.
I’m was wondering how a file that messed up even played, but I’m now going to stop wondering about it. It’s making my brain itch.
Returning to this thread’s topic,
I gave the a healthy bump. I will bring it up in my team meeting this coming week.
So I may add a perfect example for engineering, Would someone carve off a piece of a 576 video and attach here? I’ll reference it directly in that issue ticket
There is a time limited offer available here:
(link removed - time limit exceeded - available via PM upon request)
The Outer Limits - S01E01 - The Galaxy Being.mp4
The clock doth tick.
My Handbrake is ‘otherwise engaged’ today, so the full episode is all I can offer - and I have no idea what’s up with G-Drive’s preview image, but the item displays in 4:3 as intended when viewed in full or captured (I hope)
720x480 called 576p in error.
Go forth to the castle and plead our case dear Sir Chuck, Knight of PA and may God have mercy on your soul for if the King looks unfavorably upon your presentation - we will all attend your hanging.
@ChuckPA – you have no idea what you’re getting into. >:)
Attached please find 4 videos.
- 720X480 NTSC video with anamorphic flag set to display at 16X9
- 720X576 PAL video with anamorphic flag set to display at 16X9
- 720X404 - simple 16X9 video
- 720X304 - simple, cropped widescreen 2:35 aspect video
All of them will be classified by Plex as 576p videos.
They are all at the NTSC framerate of 23.976. That should not matter for identifying resolution. The widescreen example is not actually cropped, I know that, but it was encoded to display as 2.35 aspect, 1:1 pixel ratio, so it does looks stretched. That result should be the same for identification purposes as well. Finally, although I did not include examples, a PAL or NTSC video with the anamorphic flag set to 4X3, I believe, is also identified as a 576p video.
Some other resolutions that will also come up as 576p:
1024X576, 854X480, 1024X436, 960X540… and the list goes on
Basically, anything that has a pixel width greater than 640 and doesn’t reach whatever Plex has determined is 720p is now classified as 576p. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that Plex chose to use a definition box as mentioned earlier. It appears that box was 16X9, and that method should actually work. But for some ungodly reason, for 480p videos, the box was changed to 4X3, and that’s the problem. a 720Xanything-you-choose video cannot fit into a 640X480 box, so it’s bumped up to 576.
To snip off a copy (in linux) is as simple as dd.
@ChuckPA said:
To snip off a copy (in linux) is as simple asdd.
Fine - have at it.
I use Windows, Handbrake and the thing is only a little over 500Mb.
If you think i should take off my watch and put it on the top shelf for safety before putting on the hazmat suit Ok.
If you’re suggesting I should run, I’ll do that too.
You know i’m no miracle worker but if whatever this is can be simplified and be 100% consistent, the rest is ‘turn the crank’
For those who don’t know:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201035968-Generating-Sample-Files-from-Media
@ChuckPA said:
You know i’m no miracle worker but if whatever this is can be simplified and be 100% consistent, the rest is ‘turn the crank’
What can make this a bit inconsistent is probably the variability of aspect ratios, cropping of black bars, mod 4 or mod 16 rescaling, expansion of anamorphic video etc. All this nuances are what differentiate an encoding done for streaming to an original DVD material. And also the fact that many sources are BD and not DVD.
In both cases, either you use a box model, or you use a calculation taking into account display aspect ratio, some tolerance should be applied to take all this into account.
Another way is to ditch all this completely and just call everything “SD” except when it strictly adhere to 576p or 480p resolution standard:
720x576 anamorphic 16:9
720(or 702)x576 anamorphic 4:3
720x480 anamorphic 16:9
720(or 704)x480 anamorphic 4:3
I think over complicating things may be what got us here in the first place.
Plex doesn’t - and doesn’t have to - peer inside files to see what’s in them or try to figure out what they’ll be when they’re expanded for display. It only has to - and always did - see them as they’re stored and make the right choice.
Yes it does need to see the video stream info. If it doesn’t, how does it know what to do with it for your player?
Even VLC looks at the video stream when you open it.
@JuiceWSA said:
I think over complicating things may be what got us here in the first place.Plex doesn’t - and doesn’t have to - peer inside files to see what’s in them or try to figure out what they’ll be when they’re expanded for display. It only has to - and always did - see them as they’re stored and make the right choice.
^^^ Exactly Right. ^^^
For what it’s worth, I think Plex overthought the 480p resolutions, trying to consider SD and EDTV and whatever else there might be and ended up with a poor result.
If I understood the comments by the Plex employee way back at the start of this thread, they applied a couple of qualifiers to 480p video they do not apply to the other resolutions.
- a 480p video has to fit into the SD broadcast/DVD standard with a 4X3 aspect ratio
- a 480p video cannot be wider than 640 pixels
(and if you think about it, those two qualifiers contradict each other, don’t they?)
That, unfortunately bumps up a wide range of videos to 576p, regardless of the resizing or anamorphic settings used when encoding our videos. If Plex would use the same method for all the resolutions (and I suspect it’s a 16X9 box based on the vertical resolution) I’m pretty sure everything would fall back into place
Let me ask this ?
For all the Apple fans in the world, Is that tablet 16:9 or 4:3 ?
For those certain laptops which “aren’t quite” 1080p vertical, more like 1050 vertical, then what?
I’m not saying they didn’t overthink it. I am saying: Taking the minimalist viewpoint isn’t the right choice either. Think global. NTSC / ATSC is NOT the only standard out there. (and yes, that’s where 576 & 480 may have collided and why it’s been written up.) I’ve been around analog tv for ‘a while’. I find myself teaching the ‘current’ generation how it all works because when my generation is gone they won’t have a clue because the math isn’t based on digital. That’s SAD.
Yes it does need to see the video stream info. If it doesn’t, how does it know what to do with it for your player?
Even VLC looks at the video stream when you open it.
Plex didn’t do that previous to this change. If it had it would have seen a 720x480 @ 16:9, with the right anamorphic flag, would be ultimately displayed at 854x480. If you didn’t use an anamorphic flag and just encoded the item at 854x480 Plex always did misreport that as 576p. That’s not a proper way to encode a DVD anyway. DVDs can only hold a max width of 720.
The Player knows how to handle it, as does every player on Planet Earth.
Unless I’m missing some important details Plex always did just look at the stored size and report that, but regardless of my knowledge (or lack thereof) of the inner workings of Plex or it’s players a recent change in the way it’s happening now is throwing the whole thing out of whack and those are the bits we need to fix.
I also don’t know for sure if this is the case, but I believe Plex - in an effort to work with the shortcomings and/or poor settings in HDHomerun Devices for Plex DVR - is chasing those devices around the room - when they should just stick to the standards and let people figure out how to set their recorders properly.
I know for a fact if I improperly set my tuner card, WMC or MCEBuddy - that does the post-processing work before it runs the final item into my library structures - all sorts of bad things happen. Plex shouldn’t try to follow me around making changes to fix my mistakes. I should fix them to adhere to industry standards and to ultimately end up with something Plex can work with or suffer a misreporting of the resolution.
As it stands right now, we’re doing it right, but Plex is misreporting it. On that I think we can all agree.
@ChuckPA said:
Let me ask this ?For all the Apple fans in the world, Is that tablet 16:9 or 4:3 ?
For those certain laptops which “aren’t quite” 1080p vertical, more like 1050 vertical, then what?
I think we’re over-thinking again.
Does it really matter what the resolution of the player or device is? Isn’t the player supposed to play the video in the proper aspect, and resize to fit? That may involve the player adding some black bars to the top and bottom, or to the sides to keep that aspect, but that same player should play and display properly a 1080p video as well as a 240p video.
You’re right. I didn’t know what I was stepping into here.
Too many opinions at this point without enough fact and mapping of different use-cases to standards.
I don’t give a rat’s **** about the past, I care bout what’s right. Clearly define where things need be and go forward.
PS: I recognized 576 immediately. it’s from the 625 PAL signal Just as 483 lines is from the 525 NTSC signal. There is a misnomer (a generational thing to fix)… p versus i.
