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Handbrake cropping for very wide movie?

S

stevol

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 20, 2008
40
0
OK, so this is probably a dumb question, and probably it's answered somewhere else in the forum. So please forgive me -- but I recently ripped Wall•E from Blu-Ray, and it looks fantastic, except for the horizontal black bars. Now I could very easily change a setting on my TV to zoom in, thus eliminating the black bars, but then I am losing some definition.

I know there is a way to do this in Handbrake so the final file is cropped. Please help me with:

1) Is there an easy way to do this? I have tinkered with the manual settings for cropping but they seem a little confusing and I don't want to try this 10 times just to get it right. I know there is a preview screen but even then it doesn't seem too easy (lots of tweaking involved). Are their preset crops or crop settings for original aspect ratios? The original Blu-Ray for Wall•E is 2.39:1.

2) By doing this in Handbrake, rather than manually on my TV (zoom setting on TV), it will look better, have more definition, right? Or will it look about the same? If you say it will look the same, then maybe this is not worth it, and I'll just keep the file I have and zoom in via the TV setting if I want.

Thanks!
 
Error?

Did you intend to post something? The last post did came out blank. Thanks!
 
obviously it's up to you and everyone has their preferences, but i urge you to leave your movies in their original aspect ratio. you're missing out when you crop or zoom.
 
Cropping

I agree that the original aspect ratio is ideal, but most DVDs and Blu-rays are automatically cropped to fit our TV screens. Someday our TVs might have the same aspect ratio as our movie screens (the most ideal), but that hasn't happened yet (not mainstream at least). For the time being, given that our TVs don't have the same aspect ratio of the movie theater screens, I actually prefer when the movie fills the screen. It's not that much cropping to go from movie theater screen to widescreen flat panel (if it was, then most DVDs and Blu-rays wouldn't be automatically cropped when they are made and sold by the studios). I just wanted to know how to do it easily using handbrake. There doesn't seem to be a quick and easy way. I just want a 720p clean version of WALL•E that fills my screen and doesn't look distorted. Thanks.
 
stevol said:
I agree that the original aspect ratio is ideal, but most DVDs and Blu-rays are automatically cropped to fit our TV screens. Someday our TVs might have the same aspect ratio as our movie screens (the most ideal), but that hasn't happened yet (not mainstream at least). For the time being, given that our TVs don't have the same aspect ratio of the movie theater screens, I actually prefer when the movie fills the screen. It's not that much cropping to go from movie theater screen to widescreen flat panel (if it was, then most DVDs and Blu-rays wouldn't be automatically cropped when they are made and sold by the studios). I just wanted to know how to do it easily using handbrake. There doesn't seem to be a quick and easy way. I just want a 720p clean version of WALL•E that fills my screen and doesn't look distorted. Thanks.
Click to expand...

If you really want to have it fill your screen, open picture settings and the preview window, make sure anamorphic is set to none and horizontal black bars are cropped (may need to use custom--often HB doesn't seem to automatically catch them). Make sure keep aspect ratio box is checked and bump height to 720. Then use custom cropping to crop the left and right side of the movie until your width is 1280.

I'll agree with the others though--you'll cropping out pretty big chunks of the movie when you do this and personally, I'd rather see the entire picture, but to each his own.
 
stevol said:
I agree that the original aspect ratio is ideal, but most DVDs and Blu-rays are automatically cropped to fit our TV screens. Someday our TVs might have the same aspect ratio as our movie screens (the most ideal), but that hasn't happened yet (not mainstream at least).
Click to expand...
I have over 500 DVDs and Blu-rays and none of them are cropped from OAR to specifically fit my TV. There is no such thing as standard movie screen ratio. It varies between 1.85:1 and 1.30-1.40:1 and has even had some odd ones, like 1.66:1. TVs are 1.78:1. Movies matted to 1.85:1 fill your TV screen due to the overscanning that TVs generally do on video signals.

16:9 is a contrived standard for television and has nothing to do with the movie industry.
 
i recently encoded WALLE dvd in Handbrake, standard DVD definition.
it automatically cropped the black bars off and noticed that it also took away from the aspect ration, though it still stated the source and output was the same, the actual final encode wasnt, so I rencoded it with the black bars included just like the dvd plays on my mac so i figured I'd keep it the same way the dvd plays back than try to adjust something that wasnt meant to be changed.


handbrake is hit or miss with some movies, some have been flawless without needed to tweak or edit, and some you gotta double check as it crops some of them wrong.
 
ThirteenXIII said:
i recently encoded WALLE dvd in Handbrake, standard DVD definition.
it automatically cropped the black bars off and noticed that it also took away from the aspect ration, though it still stated the source and output was the same, the actual final encode wasnt, so I rencoded it with the black bars included just like the dvd plays on my mac so i figured I'd keep it the same way the dvd plays back than try to adjust something that wasnt meant to be changed.
Click to expand...
Why on earth would you want to waste bits on on the black bars ? Even after hb crops them off its displayed properly on your device. The only movies where hb will not have to crop the black bars is where the storage hight (for dvd 480) == The display height.

Also I really encourage you not to bastardize your encodes permanently by cropping to scale to fill your screen. First off what if at some point you want to play the movie back on a screen of a different aspect ratio ? As was said before I highly suggest keeping the movies aspect ratio and if you insist that it fills your screen do it with the tv or atv controls.
 
ThirteenXIII said:
handbrake is hit or miss with some movies, some have been flawless without needed to tweak or edit, and some you gotta double check as it crops some of them wrong.
Click to expand...

Handbrake isn't hit or miss on aspect ratios, you're just doing something wrong. I've encoded 400+ films from DVD to HD DVD to Blu-ray and I've yet to experience any sort of problem in this regard.
 
lol calm down.

all I'm saying is Handbrake doesnt crop some films properly.

For example WALL-E

Handbrake:
wallhb.png


Rencoded with bars:
walleitunes.png



DVD
walledvd.png





I'd just prefer the exact dvd image, without it being cropped by HB.
 
Then don't let Handbrake crop your images at all.

I don't have HB on this machine so I can't quickly glance, but how do you have your aspect ratio and anamorphic settings?
 
essentially its just the default settings for the Universal Apple preset

screenshot20100524at124.png


thats with it cropping off the blackbars and the films size being reduced essentially.
 
Note from the screenshot above, the image labeled "DVD" shows the least visible picture of the three. Look at the very bottom.

Now its not to say that hb's auto crop is without fault, for if it were the custom crop feature would not exist. But 99 times out of 100 I have found it quite accurate. one other note, without accurate frame numbers those screens of supposedly the same frame are without merit. 6 frames off can make a huge difference as to what is visible. But I am taking it for this purpose on face value. Again, there is always custom crop if you do not care for HB's auto crop results.
 
i probably should have screenshotted them at the same time (i was just showing the picture size difference.
the DVD shows the entire picture and the new encode shows the same as the dvd.

the cropped one, is similar to the dvd but it is reformatted and generally from side by side comparison shows the same amount of picture however when enlarged to fit bigger displays it looks alittle stretched.


since the new encode is 720x480 (output 832x480) and the original HB is 843x352
 
RaceTripper said:
I have over 500 DVDs and Blu-rays and none of them are cropped from OAR to specifically fit my TV. There is no such thing as standard movie screen ratio. It varies between 1.85:1 and 1.30-1.40:1 and has even had some odd ones, like 1.66:1. TVs are 1.78:1. Movies matted to 1.85:1 fill your TV screen due to the overscanning that TVs generally do on video signals.

16:9 is a contrived standard for television and has nothing to do with the movie industry.
Click to expand...

There are some movies that are even 2.35:1. All movies used to be 4:3, which is why TVs used to be 4:3. Hollywood wanted to make sure that people still went to the theaters, so they started doing widescreen formats which, still to this day, are filmed in 4:3 (maybe not if digital), but the shot is framed for a wide/short image and then the movie is cropped in post.

Movies will always try to be a different aspect ratio to TVs (or be in 3-D, or have any number of other gimmicks) to separate the movie theater experience from the home theater experience. The incompatibility is entirely deliberate.
 
rayward said:
...
Movies will always try to be a different aspect ratio to TVs (or be in 3-D, or have any number of other gimmicks) to separate the movie theater experience from the home theater experience. The incompatibility is entirely deliberate.
Click to expand...

I find the movie theater experience to be such a negative one, I haven't attended since Return of The King. I wait until they come out on Blu-ray and watch at home. But I'm also doing that on a Samsung 67" 1080p DLP and an Arcam/Dynaudio 7.1 sound system.
 
RaceTripper said:
I find the movie theater experience to be such a negative one, I haven't attended since Return of The King. I wait until they come out on Blu-ray and watch at home. But I'm also doing that on a Samsung 67" 1080p DLP and an Arcam/Dynaudio 7.1 sound system.
Click to expand...

I went to see Return of the King at the movies twice. The second time it was after it had been out for a while, and it was in the middle of the day so the theater was empty. We sat dead center. Just before the movie started, another couple came in and sat directly behind us. Then, as the movie started, the girl started humming to herself.

This wasn't some bored idiot just pranking us. After about 15 minutes of this, I turned around and asked her what the hell she was doing, and she seemed genuinely shocked. We moved, which sucked because now they had better seats than us. Should've gone and sat behind them and kicked her seat for the rest of the movie.
 
rayward said:
I went to see Return of the King at the movies twice. The second time it was after it had been out for a while, and it was in the middle of the day so the theater was empty. We sat dead center. Just before the movie started, another couple came in and sat directly behind us. Then, as the movie started, the girl started humming to herself.

This wasn't some bored idiot just pranking us. After about 15 minutes of this, I turned around and asked her what the hell she was doing, and she seemed genuinely shocked. We moved, which sucked because now they had better seats than us. Should've gone and sat behind them and kicked her seat for the rest of the movie.
Click to expand...
The other problem I have with movie theaters is they all over-load their sound systems into clipping distortion. It sounds awful and it's bad for hearing. All of them do that. I've never been in a movie theater where that sounded even half-decent, even when they had good equipment that should have sounded good.

I really have no desire to be in a theater for anything.
 
RaceTripper said:
The other problem I have with movie theaters is they all over-load their sound systems into clipping distortion. It sounds awful and it's bad for hearing. All of them do that. I've never been in a movie theater where that sounded even half-decent, even when they had good equipment that should have sounded good.

I really have no desire to be in a theater for anything.
Click to expand...

I enjoy the theater but I finally had to start wearing earplugs. I have no idea what they're thinking with the volume. My ears have had enough abuse over the years and ring a bit, so I would really like to avoid making that worse.

When I saw the most recent Star Trek movie at the theater it was ridiculous. The wife went from thinking I was a bit odd for the earplug thing, to buying some herself.
 
I just purchased the Wall-E Blu Ray and have the same issue as the original poster. I think his question was misunderstood. The original poster is not looking to crop the movie itself to fit his 16:9 tv, he is looking to crop out the top/bottom black bars so that the full resolution is used for the movie content, not wasted on black bars (a couple of people noted that).

I have ripped many blu rays and auto cropping has taken care of this, but for some reason it does not with Wall-E. The aspect ratio of the movie is 2.39, so I did some math, 1280/2.39 = ~536. (720-536)/2 - 92. So I figure I need to crop 92 pixels off the top and bottom to remove the black bars. When I do this in handbrake the resulting video crops out a large portion of the black bars, but not all of them. Is there something wrong with my math? I can experiment and eventually get it right, but just curious if there is an obvious way to figure out the right number of pixels?

Thanks,
Peter
 
pedz said:
I just purchased the Wall-E Blu Ray and have the same issue as the original poster. I think his question was misunderstood. The original poster is not looking to crop the movie itself to fit his 16:9 tv, he is looking to crop out the top/bottom black bars so that the full resolution is used for the movie content, not wasted on black bars (a couple of people noted that).

I have ripped many blu rays and auto cropping has taken care of this, but for some reason it does not with Wall-E. The aspect ratio of the movie is 2.39, so I did some math, 1280/2.39 = ~536. (720-536)/2 - 92. So I figure I need to crop 92 pixels off the top and bottom to remove the black bars. When I do this in handbrake the resulting video crops out a large portion of the black bars, but not all of them. Is there something wrong with my math? I can experiment and eventually get it right, but just curious if there is an obvious way to figure out the right number of pixels?

Thanks,
Peter
Click to expand...

There's a much easier solution in the Handbrake settings. Open Picture Settings and then select Preview Window. If auto-cropping hasn't done the trick (often the issue with my .mkv rips), select Custom cropping on the Picture Settings page and manually adjust the top and bottom cropping using the up/down arrows, keeping an eye on the picture preview screen until the black bars are gone (be sure to leave the keep aspect ratio box checked.)
 
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